Date: March 13, 1989 To: X3T9.2 Membership From: Larry Lamers, X3T9.2 Recording Secretary John Lohmeyer, X3T9.2 Chairman Subject: March 1989 SCSI Working Group Minutes Jim McGrath of Quantum hosted a working group meeting March 6, 1989 in Milpitas, CA at the Sheraton Inn. The working group thanks Jim and Quantum for hosting this short meeting. The final agenda was: SCSI-2 Items 1. Review of the SCSI-2 Revision 7a changes. [Larry Lamers] 2. Proposed new Sequential-Access Density Code. (89-43) [Bill Duran] SCSI-3 Items 50. 87-186 SEND DIAGNOSTIC Pages [Bill Spence] 51. 87-203 & 87-217 LOAD SKIP MASK command proposal [Greg Floryance, Dave McIntyre] 52. 87-206 More that 8 devices on wide SCSI [David Harms] 53. 88-002 Search Command modifications [Jeff Stai] 54. 88-007 Expanded RelAdr Bit Definition [Paul Boulay] 55. 88-69R1, 88-92, & 88-100 Autoconfiguration SSWG [Jerry Marazas, Paul Nitza, Jim McGrath, Paul Boulay] 56. 88-127 Error Handling Action Codes [George Penokie] The following people attended the meeting: Name Status Organization ------------------------------ ------ ------------------------------ Mr. Robert N. Snively P Adaptec, Inc. Mr. Al Wilhelm A Adaptec, Inc. Mr. Scott Smyers A Advanced Micro Devices Mr. Jerry Katzung A Apple Computer Mr. Cristopher J. Rhea A AT&T Mr. Dan Davies P Cipher Data Products, Inc. Mr. Paul Hanmann A Emulex Corp. Mr. I. Dal Allan P ENDL Mr. Curtis Mulder A Exabyte Corp. Mr. Robert Liu P Fujitsu America, Inc. Mr. Bob Pentecost P Hewlett Packard Co. Mr. Mike Peper V Hewlett Packard Co. Mr. Minoru Yoshida V Hitachi Computer Products Mr. George Penokie P IBM Corp. Mr. David A. Buesing O IBM Corp. Mr. Gene Milligan P IMPRIMIS/CDC Mr. William Homans P LMS-TSD Mr. Lawrence J. Lamers P Maxtor Corp. Mr. John Lohmeyer P NCR Corp. Mr. Paul Nitza P OTL Engineering Mr. James McGrath P Quantum Corp. Mr. Mark Sherwood A Scientific Micro Systems Mr. D. W. Spence P Texas Instruments Mr. Jeff Stai P Western Digital 24 attendees Status Key: P - Principal A - Alternate O - Observer V - Visitor Only one new document was distributed at the meeting: Document Doc Date Author Description of Document ------------- -------- --------------- --------------------------------------- X3T9.2/89-43 B. Duran Proposed Sequential-Access Density Code General Discussion Mr. Mori's comments on ISO 9316 (SCSI) were discussed briefly. It was felt that they only pertain to the ISO document and not to SCSI-2. Gene Milligan, as X3T9 International Representative, raised the question of who should be appointed the ISO technical editor. Since Harvey Rosenfeld has hinted that ANSI will accept ISO style, Larry Lamers tentatively agreed to edit both documents. At the last SC-13 meeting, the USA delegation promised to submit a copy of SCSI-2 to ISO upon its acceptance by X3T9. Agenda Items for SCSI-2 1. Review of the SCSI-2 Revision 7a changes. [Larry Lamers] At the plenary meeting in Austin quite a few last-minute changes were made to revision 7 which was then forwarded to X3T9 as revision 8. In order to insure these changes were correctly incorporated, the general editor prepared revision 7a, which was distributed at the meeting. Larry Lamers led a detailed review of the changes that he had made. This resulted in several editorial improvements to the document and a couple corrections where Larry had misunderstood what the plenary wanted. Larry Lamers brought up a question of how much protocol support is required of a target that responds to a single-bit selection. The SCSI-2 document does not permit an initiator to do a single initiator selection, but it does permit a target to respond for compatibility with SCSI-1 initiators. The document is mute on further issues such as is the target required to honor the ATN signal or DISCONNECT messages? After some discussion, the working group felt that a target which responds to SCSI-1 protocol (single-initiator option) should be bound by the SCSI-1 rules. A clarification was added to the implementors note saying that the target may respond as an SCSI-1 device. In order to avoid a null model in section 7, John Lohmeyer prepared a simple model for section 7.1. This model contains no requirements. He proposed that, later, the technical editor should consider moving parts of section 6 into the general device model. There are still some issues concerning ASCs and ASCQs. The last plenary did not want to merge these two fields because they did not want an implication that the ASCQ must be supported. But there are a few cases in the document where the document seems to require an ASC to be set to some value that has a nonzero ASCQ. The editors tried to conform to what they perceived was the group's intentions, but there may still be issues here. One place where they resolved an apparent conflict was in section 13 (CD-ROM) where a statement was changed so that a non-zero ASCQ would not be required. A correction was made in Section 9 where some the the values for the density code corresponding to QIC 320 were in error. 2. Proposed new Sequential-Access Density Code. (89-43) [Bill Duran] Bill Duran of Exabyte presented a document requesting a new tape density code. While most people favored adding this new density code, it was felt that the working group did not have the authority to make such a change after the document was forwarded. There is not yet an X3B5 reference document. This item was put into the queue for consideration when X3T9.2 next receives the document. SCSI-3 items Near the end of Monday, the working group decided to adjourn yet that day rather jumping into the SCSI-3 project in depth. Each item in the queue for SCSI-3 was reviewed briefly to determine whether it was still appropriate to be considered and to outline the important features of each proposal. 50. 87-186 SEND DIAGNOSTIC Pages [Bill Spence] Bill Spence suggested that this item will turn into a more ambitious proposal to include ways to diagnostic functions in SCSI devices. He mentioned that X3B7 is working on something that relates to testing intelligent devices. 51. 87-203 & 87-217 LOAD SKIP MASK command proposal [Greg Floryance, Dave McIntyre] The LOAD SKIP MASK command (a.k.a. scatter/gather) functions are still desirable. 52. 87-206 More that 8 devices on wide SCSI [David Harms] More than eight devices on wide SCSI remains on the list. The three-bit encoded ID fields in some commands (COPY, third-party reservations) could pose some compatibility problems. 53. 88-002 Search Command modifications [Jeff Stai] Modifications of SEARCH commands is tied with the scatter/gather functions and is still an appropriate topic. 54. 88-007 Expanded RelAdr Bit Definition [Paul Boulay] John Lohmeyer outlined the history of why the RelAdr bit is restricted. He suggested that no decision should be made on the appropriateness of this topic since Paul Boulay was not present. 55. 88-69R1, 88-92, & 88-100 Autoconfiguration SSWG [Jerry Marazas, Paul Nitza, Jim McGrath, Paul Boulay] Jerry Marazas was not present to indicate whether he was still interested in this topic. Many of the other proposals had been submitted because people did not like the 60-pin proposal from IBM. If IBM drops their proposal, these competing proposals may also be dropped. 56. 88-127 Error Handling Action Codes [George Penokie] George Penokie indicated that IBM is still interested in this topic. Proposed Additions to the SCSI-3 Queue * Autosense [Nitza] * Apple request for Data DAT device type * Documentation Layering [Gary Stephens] * Single-cable 16-bit wide SCSI * Alternate physical layers (e.g., fiber optics)