john@ecsvax.UUCP (03/09/84)
I have just finished bringing up Venix/86 on an IBM PC/XT, but along the way two interesting problems developed with the XT: 1) The XT was delivered with approximately 36,000 bytes in bad sectors. I was lucky that none of the bad sectors showed up in the swap area, but I wonder how many people will try to bring up versions of UNIX on XT's and discover that they have bad sectors in critical spots. Venix/86 at least is not smart enough to work around the bad sectors. My IBM dealer says that 36,000 bytes in bad sectors is only slightly above average. A quick check of some other XT owners tended to confirm this. 2) I wanted the XT to have a two megabyte DOS partition, so I set aside 60 cylinders for DOS when I configured Venix. When I ran IBM's FDISK program to establish the DOS partition, FDISK reported that there was no space for DOS, even though simple addition of the number of cylinders devoted to the non-DOS operating system (Venix) confirmed that there were 60 cylinders left for DOS. (The XT has 305 cylinders, and I had used 245 for Venix.) On a whim, I decided to try the Compaq FDISK utility that came with a friend's Compaq Plus, and the *Compaq* FDISK utility saw that there were 60 cylinders left for DOS, and was able establish this DOS partition for me, which I then was able to format and use for DOS data. I have DOS 2.0, and my IBM Guide to Operations is version 2.02. Has anyone else had a similar problem? My conclusion from this is that for my application (Venix and DOS on the hard disk) a Compaq Plus would be superior. I have not called Unisource (Venturcom's marketing and support agent) to report my problem, but I will. In the meantime, this looks like IBM's problem, not Venturcom's. john hogan nc educational computing service rtp, nc 27709 (919) 549 0671 ...decvax!mcnc!ecsvax!john or ...akgua!mcnc!ecsvax!john