Minutes of Serial Issues Study Group - July 15, 1996

Lohmeyer, John JLOHMEYE at cossymwest.co.symbios.com
Tue Jul 23 12:43:00 PDT 1996


* From the SCSI Reflector, posted by:
* "Lohmeyer, John" <JLOHMEYE at COSSYMWEST.CO.SYMBIOS.COM>
*

Minutes of Serial Issues Study Group             X3T10/96-204r0

Accredited Standards Committee*
X3, Information Technology
                                    Doc. No.: X3T10/96-204r0
                                        Date: July 23, 1996
                                     Project:
                                   Ref. Doc.:
                                    Reply to: Bill Dallas

To:       Membership of X3T10

From:     William Dallas, CAM Technical Editor
          Ralph Weber, Secretary X3T10

Subject:  Minutes of Serial Issues Study Group
          July 15, 1996 -- Colorado Springs, CO


                            Agenda

1. Opening Remarks

2. Attendance and Membership

3. Approval of Agenda

4. Document Distribution

5. Issues for discussion
  5.1 Device Identification Issues
  5.2 Ordering of SCSI tasks by a Logical Unit
  5.3 Certain address sensitive SCSI commands don't work on some
     serial channels

6. Review of Action Items

7. Future Meeting Schedule (if any)

8. Adjournment




                          Results of Meeting

1.   Opening Remarks

William Dallas called the meeting to order at 2:00 p.m., Monday July
15, 1996.  He thanked Symbios Logic for hosting the meeting.

As is customary, the people attending introduced themselves and a copy
of the attendance list was circulated.


2.   Attendance and Membership

Attendance at working group meetings does not count toward minimum
attendance requirements for X3T10 membership.  Working group meetings
are open to any person or organization directly and materially
affected by X3T10's scope of work.  The following people attended the
meeting:

         Name          S        Organization         Electronic Mail   
Address
 ---------------------- -- -------------------------   
 --------------------------
Mr. Norm Harris        P  Adaptec, Inc.   
            nharris at eng.adaptec.com
Mr. Ron Roberts        A  Apple Computer            rkroberts at aol.com
Mr. Peter Johansson    P  Congruent Software, Inc.  pjohansson at aol.com
Mr. Charles Monia      P  Digital Equipment Corp.   monia at shr.dec.com
Mr. William Dallas     A# Digital Equipment Corp.   
  dallas at wasted.enet.dec.com
Mr. Roger Cummings     P  Distributed Processing   
   cummings_roger at dpt.com
                          Tech.
Mr. I. Dal Allan       A  ENDL                      dal_allan at mcimail.com
Mr. Edward Lappin      P  Exabyte Corp.             tedl at exabyte.com
Mr. Jim Jones          A  Exabyte Corp.             jimj at exabyte.com
Mr. William Martin     A# Hewlett Packard Co.       kc at core.rose.hp.com
Mr. Mike Wenzel        V  Hewlett Packard Co.       mw at corp.rose.hp.com
Mr. Giles Frazier      V  IBM Corp.   
                gfrazier at ausvm6.vnet.ibm.
                                                    com
Mr. Edward A. Gardner  P  Ophidian Designs          gardner at acm.org
Mr. Gerald Houlder     A  Seagate Technology        Gerry_Houlder at notes.
                                                    seagate.com
Mr. Erich Oetting      P  Storage Technology Corp.   
 Erich_Oetting at Stortek.com
Mr. Robert N. Snively  P  Sun Microsystems Computer   
bob.snively at eng.sun.com
                          Co
Mr. Rod DeKoning       A  Symbios Logic Inc.   
       rod.dekoning at symbios.com
Mr. Ralph O. Weber     A# Symbios Logic Inc.        roweber at acm.org

18 People Present

Status Key:  P    -  Principal
             A,A# -  Alternate
             O    -  Observer
             L    -  Liaison
             V    -  Visitor

3.   Approval of Agenda

The agenda was approved with the following deletions:

     4 Call for Patents

4.   Document Distribution

Mike Wenzel announced the following electronic sources of information
about software device support in a serial environment.

There is a reflector at: serial_concerns at zk3.dec.com.  The reflector
is managed by majordomo.

There is a www site at http:tachyon.rose.hp.com/serial.

5.   Issues for discussion

5.1  Device Identification Issues

Bill Dallas and Mike Wenzel introduced the concern over how to
uniquely identify a device, independent of how the device is accessed.
They provided some historical perspective on the issue (and all the
issues to be discussed at the meeting).

The basic requirement is for a globally unique identifier.  The
details of the globally unique identifier, what entity (or entities)
is identified, how the identifier is retrieved, how many different
identifiers are needed in one device, and several other issues were
discussed at length.

The group agreed that a proposal for changes in SPC should be written.
The proposal should include the addition of an identifier type code in
the device identification VPD page for port unique ID.  The proposal
also should include new SPC wording saying that if a protocol requires
unique IDs then support for the device identification VPD page is
mandatory.

5.2  Ordering of SCSI tasks by a Logical Unit

Charles presented a question about the ordering properties of the
several SCSI transports.  After a brief discussion, most of those
present agreed that the standards community is composed of two basic
camps; those that require ordering and those that have no use for
ordering.

Charles was looking for a consensus on a single model.  What followed
was a lengthy discussion, with vain attempts at proselytizing on both
sides.  The result of the discussion was completely inconclusive.

5.3  Certain address sensitive SCSI commands don't work on some serial
channels

After a brief discussion, the group agreed to propose that RESERVE(6)
and RELEASE(6) be made obsolete and that RESERVE(10) and RELEASE(10)
be made mandatory.  Concerns were raised regarding the copy family of
commands.  However, it was noted that the addressing fields were
expanded in the copy commands a long time ago.

6.   Review of Action Items

Rod DeKoning will write a proposal describing the globally unique ID
change, discussed SPC changes above.

Bill Dallas will write a proposal to make RESERVE(6) and RELEASE(6)
obsolete and make RESERVE(10) and RELEASE(10) mandatory.

7.   Future Meeting Schedule (if any)

The group agreed schedule a teleconference meeting before the
September X3T10 meeting week and a study group meeting during the
September X3T10 meeting week.

8.   Adjournment

The meeting was adjourned at 6:15 p.m. on Monday July 15, 1996.




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