Date: January 17, 1992 To: X3T9.2 Membership From: Lawrence J. Lamers, X3T9.2 Secretary John B. Lohmeyer, X3T9.2 Chair Subject: January 14-15, 1992 X3T9.2 Working Group Meeting Minutes John Lohmeyer called the meeting to order at 9:00 a.m. January 14, 1992. He thanked Pat Savage of Shell Development Company for hosting the meeting. As is customary, the people attending introduced themselves. A copy of the X3T9.2 membership list was circulated for attendance and corrections. Copies of the draft agenda and the recent document register were made available to those attending. Information on X3T9.2 and Mailing Subscription Forms were made available. The final agenda was as follows: 1. PCMCIA/SFF report [McGrath] 2. CAM Issues (91-140, -162, -169, -210, -211) [Smyers, Burr, Youngwerth] 3. Medium Changer functions... (91-72, -121) [Therrien, Raudebaugh] 4. Removable Media Support for SCSI-3 (91-88) [Wilhelm] 5. SCSI Device Identifier (92-007) [Smyers, Snively, Hagerman] 6. P1394 Update [Smyers] 7. SCSI Data Phase LRC (91-176R1, -207, -208) [Penokie, Gardner] 8. Scanner Proposal (91-134) [Motoyama] 9. 1992 Working Group Meeting Schedule 10. Report on DADI Working Group [Allan] 11. Report on SPI Working Group [Spence] 12. Report on SCSI-3 Queuing Working Group [Penokie] 13. Report on SPI Connector Contact [Mosley] 14. Do fast data timings apply to other phases? [Stai] 15. IBM Serial Interface Proposal [Mike Mitoma] The following people attended the meeting: Name Status Organization ------------------------------ ------ ------------------------------ Mr. Robert C. Herron A 3M Company Mr. Jim Havener O 3M Company Mr. Thomas Newman P Adaptec, Inc. Mr. Yun-Che Wang O Advanced Micro Devices Mr. Richard Taborek O Amdahl Corp. Mr. Charles Brill P AMP, Inc. Mr. Bob Whiteman A AMP, Inc. Mr. Ken Schreder S AMP, Inc. Mr. Scott Smyers P Apple Computer Mr. Ed Young P Archive Corp. Mr. Edward Hrvatin P Burndy Corp. Mr. Bent Stoevhasc O Canstar Mr. Kumar Malavalli O Canstar Mr. Joe Chen P Cirrus Logic Inc. Mr. John Geldman A Cirrus Logic Inc. Mr. William Galloway O Compaq Computer Corp. Mr. Stephen R. Cornaby P Conner Peripherals Mr. Wayne Sanderson P Control Data Corp. Mr. John A. Gallant A Digital Equipment Corp. Mr. Edward A. Gardner A Digital Equipment Corp. Dr. William Ham A Digital Equipment Corp. Mr. Skip Jones A Emulex Corp. Mr. I. Dal Allan P ENDL Mr. D. W. Spence A ENDL Associates Ms. Lingling Polican A Future Domain Mr. Kurt Chan P Hewlett Packard Co. Mr. Jeffrey L. Williams A Hewlett Packard Co. Mr. Ian D. Judd V IBM (UK) Ltd. Mr. Mike Mitoma V IBM Almaden Research Dr. Mike Mutoma V IBM Almaden Research Mr. George Penokie P IBM Corp. Mr. Gary R. Stephens A IBM Corp. Mr. KC Chennappan O IBM Corp. Mr. Gerald Rouse O IBM Corp. Mr. Giles Frazier S IBM Corp. Mr. Claude Mosley S IBM Corp. Mr. Larry Grasso S IBM Corp. Mr. William G. Verdoorn, Jr. V IBM Corp. Mr. John R. Taylor V IBM Corp. Mr. Thomas Forrer V IBM Corp. Mr. Kevin R. Pokorney A Intellistor, Inc. Mr. William D'Andrea S J.S.T. Corporation Mr. Don Tolmie O Los Alamos Labs Mr. Lawrence J. Lamers P Maxtor Corp. Mr. Bob Masterson P Methode Electronics, Inc. Mr. John Lohmeyer P NCR Corp. Mr. David Steele S NCR Corp. Mr. Robert B. Lewis V Novell, Inc. Mr. Stephen F. Heil A Panasonic Technologies, Inc Mr. James McGrath P Quantum Corp. Mr. Steve Kennedy O Quantum Corp. Mr. Gene Milligan A Seagate Technology Mr. Gerald Houlder A Seagate Technology Mr. Ram Battu S Seagate Technology, Inc. Mr. Forrest Crowell P SGS-Thomson Microelectronics Mr. Robert L. Simpson P Sony Corp. of America Mr. Vit Novak O Sun Microsystems, Inc. Mr. Ricardo Dominguez P Texas Instruments Mr. Alan Wetzel V Texas Instruments Mr. Harvey Waltersdorf P Thomas & Betts Mr. Arlan P. Stone A UNISYS Mr. Mark Jordan S Unitrode Integrated Circuits 62 People Present Status Key: P - Principal Member A - Alternate Member O - Observer S,V - Visitor Results of Meeting 1. PCMCIA/SFF report [McGrath] Jim McGrath gave a brief report on the recent developments with PCMCIA. 2. CAM Issues (91-140, -162, -169, -210, -211) [Smyers, Burr, Youngwerth] George Penokie's editorial issues were covered immediately. There was a separate meeting to cover other issues in parallel with the afternoon SPI working group meeting. Revision 2.6 was created at this meeting, but not all the issues were resolved. Revision 2.6 will be posted on the SCSI BBS. A follow-on meeting will be held during the February plenary meeting. It is expected that revision 2.7 will result and this will be in the March 1992 mailing. 3. Medium Changer functions... (91-72, -121) [Therrien, Raudebaugh] This agenda item will be dropped due to lack of participation by any interested parties. 4. Removable Media Support for SCSI-3 (91-88) [Wilhelm] This agenda item will be dropped due to lack of participation by any interested parties. 5. SCSI Device Identifier (92-007) [Smyers, Snively, Hagerman] Vit Novak presented a document with symbols for single-ended and differential identifiers. Another interesting discussion followed. The consensus is for a base icon (the current SCSI icon for single ended and a double-line variant for differential) with optional lettering. Vit will revise the drawings for the next plenary meeting. 6. P1394 Update [Smyers] There was no discussion of this topic within the general working group. See the SCSI Packetized Protocol working group minutes for additional information (92-021). 7. SCSI Data Phase LRC (91-176R1, -207, -208) [Penokie, Gardner] Ed Gardner talked about the justifications for having an error checking protocol on SCSI data transfers. It is not to allow use of lower cost or less reliable components, but to bolster confidence in total system reliability, and prevent stupid mistakes from endangering system integrity. Bill Ham stated that physical layer errors, if they occur, will be clock errors, and these are already addressed by the protocol. He agreed that if there is an error protocol it needs to be a standard. Dal pointed out that this looks to be primarily a marketing issue. Pat Savage stated a real world case wherein Shell Oil lost a month of data due to an error in the data path that an LRC would have prevented. There was some consensus to add this feature to the packetized parallel version. This could possibly be done without seriously affecting the silicon. 8. Scanner Proposal (91-134) [Motoyama] No discussion at this meeting. 9. 1992 Working Group Meeting Schedule March 16 Monday 9:00-2:00 Small Form Factor Monday 2:00-5:00 ATA Extensions WG Monday 5:00-8:00 Queuing WG Monday 2:00-5:00 Connector Contact WG March 17 Tuesday 9:00-1:00 General WG Tuesday 1:00-8:00 SPI WG March 18 Wednesday 8:00-5:00 General WG 10. Report on DADI Working Group [Allan] Work on the DADI project has not yet begun. This meeting addressed issues related to the ATA extensions and mapping ATA to PCMCIA. Direct attach will come as a follow on. See 92-018 for further information. There will be meeting on Friday, January 17, 1992 of the appointed IEEE and ANSI members to discuss the division of work. 11. Report on SPI Working Group [Spence] There was a fairly strong consensus that TERMPWR is not reliable and contributes to problems in SCSI systems. The result is that there will be a recommendation that the Alt 1 termination (200/330 ohm) be dropped from SCSI-3. See 92-020 for further information. 12. Report on SCSI-3 Queuing Working Group [Penokie] See 92-019 for further information. 13. Report on SPI Connector Contact [Mosley] Claude Mosley reported. There were additions to the attributes being discussed. These were pin radius, plating, and surface finish. A need for 200 cycles without wear through of the noble surface was proposed. There is a wipe-length vs. tip-length trade-off issue to be resolved. The failure criteria was established as a change in resistance of greater than 100% from start of testing. A proposal is planned to be distributed at next plenary meeting, followed by another WG meeting in San Diego. See document 92-022 for details. 14. Do fast data timings apply to other phases? [Stai] Kurt Chan stated that consistent timings should be used to minimize cable cost. David Steele stated that from a chip standpoint it makes little difference. In receive mode, he accepts fast timings. In transmit mode he uses slow timings for other than Fast data transfers. It is clearly ambiguous. The wording can be interpreted either way depending on the meaning of the term "using" in the fast signal definitions. The consensus though is that fast timings only apply to the DATA IN and DATA OUT transfer phases for which a fast synchronous data transfer has been negotiated. 15. IBM Serial Interface Proposal [Mike Mitoma] Mike Mitoma gave an overview of the IBM requirements for a serial mass storage interface. He stated that IBM desires to have a standard for the interface prior to committing to the architecture. He then introduced Ian Judd who gave a presentation on the Serial Storage Architecture (SSA). Please see 92-23 through 92-27 for more information. The SSA proposal is based on, but not identical to the serial interface used in the IBM 9333. Key differences are that the 9333 is point-to- point while SSA is a ring and the 9333 uses 4B/5B coding while SSA uses 8B/10B coding. After Ian's presentation, Mike stated that it was IBM's intention to license patents pertaining to SSA in accordance with the ANSI patent policy and that they were prepared to support the SSA work by providing a document editors.