greg@noel.CTS.COM (J. Gregory Noel) (11/17/89)
Sorry for the cross-posting, but these threads from the two news groups seem to be related. Followups to comp.sys.amiga.tech. Scott Thompson (sft@cbnewsc.ATT.COM) writes: >I have my large [1224-cylinder] Maxtor drive connected to a Commodore >2090 controller. ... [While preping] my amiga GURU'd and rebooted... >Now the machine hangs at the BindDrivers call ... therefore I cannot Mount >any partition to re-prep the drive. Jonathan Crone, are you there? Does this sound familiar? This seems to be \exactly/ the problem we are having -- and now that I think back on it, my Amiga did crash while I was preping the Maxtor, so this may be just what caused the problem. Did your Amiga crash/reboot while you were preping your disk drive? So, given this additional facet, does anybody have any notions as to how to cure it? I'd really like to be able to use the space on that disk.... -- J. Gregory Noel, UNIX Guru greg@noel.cts.com or greg@noel.uucp
greg@noel.CTS.COM (J. Gregory Noel) (11/19/89)
Rick Flower (rickf@pnet02.gryphon.com) writes: >Well, I was the original person that posted about my "Maxtor" problem, and I You were the original poster in one of the threads; the other thread was started by Jonathan Crone. But, as you indicated, your problem was obviously one of the configuration being incorrect. I (and apparently others) have had to solve this problem, as well. A second problem that I (and others) have encountered is a BindDrivers failure. The curious thing about the failure is the parallel symptoms giving various people problems, not only for those of us with 2090s, but other controllers as well. In particular, you say... >.... It DOES however >come up with "NOT-A-DOS-DISK" the very first time it boots however.. I spin up >the drive (it's in an external case) and then turn on the A2000. I end up >having to re-boot the system after it gets going a bit for it to work >correctly... I had the same symptoms here, as well, after I finally got my configuration numbers untangled. I leave my computer running most of the time, so this was more of a nuisance than anything else, but it bothered me, so I kept futzing with it, trying different preping options, and so forth. Eventually, the drive stopped working at all; BindDrivers would hang whenever the SCSI drive was connected. I was doing a number of other changes to the hardware when that happened (adding some new memory), so my recollection of the exact circumstances is fuzzy, but the machine crashed at least once while I was preping the drive. (This is what Scott Thompson identifies as the triggering event for him.) Note that this is a third problem, that may or may not be related to BindDrivers hanging. (This could be a symptom of a partial failure of BindDrivers, not actually recognizing the drive, but not hanging, either.) >Ooops.. I almost forgot why I wrote this message... I was talking with Kelly >Keith of Creative Computers (Lawndale) [ Kelly is the Service Manager ] and he >mentioned that the Maxtors sometimes have "wierd" SCSI commands and don't work >as well as they could or as well as CDC or other equivalent drives.. Just >thought that I would throw in that tid-bit.. This is interesting; could you get some more details? >I'll assume that if you were to disconnect your Maxtor drive from the system, >that the BindDrivers would run correctly enabling a complete boot?? Yes. In fact, when I remove the Maxtor drive, the ST-506 drive I also have on my 2090 controller boots up just fine. (Removing the ST-506 drive doesn't make any difference; it also hangs with only the Maxtor connected.) >You could >possibly "and I do mean possibly" connect the drive to the SCSI bus after it >has powered up, but I WOULDN'T -- AND I EMPHASIZE THAT -- WOULDN'T try that >unless EVERYTHING else failed.. It is a strange problem though. I'm a software type; I've considered trying this, but this is sufficiently dangerous that I haven't had the courage. I don't think it would help anyway, since BindDrivers wouldn't have found the drive, so you couldn't access it anyway. And, on the other thread, Jonathan Crone (CRONEJP@UREGINA1.BITNET) writes: >thanks all for the messages asking if the Guru strikes the maxtor > on the prepping step... >That ain't the problem.... the damn thing gurus right on the >binddrivers.... can't even get close to formatting it I think the question is, did you \ever/ get past BindDrivers? Or has it hung every time? If the problem is something like an incomplete write during prep, or if prep clobbers the disk configuration as a part of the formatting and doesn't reset it until the end, then a guru during a prep might be significant. >nearest thing i can get is from Maxtor is that their drive takes a long >time to return a Ready from the drive after the Reset is asserted >by the hardframe... and the [Microbotics] Hard frame driver isn't used to >having to wait for the drive to respond to the reset... so it Gurus... >I have a description into Microbotics of the difficulty, This sounds like something similar to what Rick Flower was saying about the "weird" SCSI commands. If you find out anything more concrete, I'd like to know about it.... >come ON now.... Maxtors aren't exactly a trivial brand of drive!!!! Yes, and apparently it's one used by CBM quite a bit, so you'd expect that these kinds of problems had been shaken out some time ago. Maybe CBM only uses the smaller-capacity drives and not the bigger ones? (How would that make a difference???) -- J. Gregory Noel, UNIX Guru greg@noel.cts.com or greg@noel.uucp
rickf@pnet02.gryphon.com (Rick Flower) (11/19/89)
greg@noel.CTS.COM (J. Gregory Noel) writes: >Scott Thompson (sft@cbnewsc.ATT.COM) writes: >>I have my large [1224-cylinder] Maxtor drive connected to a Commodore >>2090 controller. ... [While preping] my amiga GURU'd and rebooted... >>Now the machine hangs at the BindDrivers call ... therefore I cannot Mount >>any partition to re-prep the drive. > >Jonathan Crone, are you there? Does this sound familiar? This seems to be >\exactly/ the problem we are having -- and now that I think back on it, my >Amiga did crash while I was preping the Maxtor, so this may be just what >caused the problem. Did your Amiga crash/reboot while you were preping your >disk drive? > >So, given this additional facet, does anybody have any notions as to how to >cure it? I'd really like to be able to use the space on that disk.... Well, I was the original person that posted about my "Maxtor" problem, and I must say that MY problem was due to a stupid thing I did.. Mainly using the incorrect sectors/track value.. I used 32 instead of 24 sectors/track. Once I got the correct value of 24, things have been working great! I'm using a Maxtor XT3280 drive (220 Meg Formatted) if anyone is interested.. I've got it working great and it has been working for over a week now! It DOES however come up with "NOT-A-DOS-DISK" the very first time it boots however.. I spin up the drive (it's in an external case) and then turn on the A2000. I end up having to re-boot the system after it gets going a bit for it to work correctly... Ooops.. I almost forgot why I wrote this message... I was talking with Kelly Keith of Creative Computers (Lawndale) [ Kelly is the Service Manager ] and he mentioned that the Maxtors sometimes have "wierd" SCSI commands and don't work as well as they could or as well as CDC or other equivalent drives.. Just thought that I would throw in that tid-bit.. I'll assume that if you were to disconnect your Maxtor drive from the system, that the BindDrivers would run correctly enabling a complete boot?? You could possibly "and I do mean possibly" connect the drive to the SCSI bus after it has powered up, but I WOULDN'T -- AND I EMPHASIZE THAT -- WOULDN'T try that unless EVERYTHING else failed.. It is a strange problem though. P.S. I'm also using an old 2090 controller.. >-- >J. Gregory Noel, UNIX Guru greg@noel.cts.com or greg@noel.uucp +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Caution, 68k Assembly Language Programmer at Play! | | Support S.A.N.E. (Snails Against Nuclear Energy) | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | UUCP: {ames!elroy, <backbone>}!gryphon!pnet02!rickf | | InterNet: rickf@pnet02.gryphon.com | +=============================================================================+
sft@cbnewsc.ATT.COM (scott.thompson) (11/21/89)
In article <22441@gryphon.COM> rickf@pnet02.gryphon.com (Rick Flower) writes: |greg@noel.CTS.COM (J. Gregory Noel) writes: | |>Scott Thompson (sft@cbnewsc.ATT.COM) writes: |>>I have my large [1224-cylinder] Maxtor drive connected to a Commodore |>>2090 controller. ... [While preping] my amiga GURU'd and rebooted... |>>Now the machine hangs at the BindDrivers call ... therefore I cannot Mount |>>any partition to re-prep the drive. |> ... | |Well, I was the original person that posted about my "Maxtor" problem, and I |must say that MY problem was due to a stupid thing I did.. Mainly using the |incorrect sectors/track value.. I used 32 instead of 24 sectors/track. Once I |got the correct value of 24, things have been working great! I'm using a |Maxtor XT3280 drive (220 Meg Formatted) if anyone is interested.. I've got it |working great and it has been working for over a week now! It DOES however |come up with "NOT-A-DOS-DISK" the very first time it boots however.. I spin up |the drive (it's in an external case) and then turn on the A2000. I end up |having to re-boot the system after it gets going a bit for it to work |correctly... | ... | |I'll assume that if you were to disconnect your Maxtor drive from the system, |that the BindDrivers would run correctly enabling a complete boot?? You could |possibly "and I do mean possibly" connect the drive to the SCSI bus after it |has powered up, but I WOULDN'T -- AND I EMPHASIZE THAT -- WOULDN'T try that |unless EVERYTHING else failed.. It is a strange problem though. | |P.S. I'm also using an old 2090 controller.. The problem you described is not the same as my problem, I have had the drive working for quite awhile. My problem started when I decided to re-partition the drive. I created four partitions and the first three went fine, it was only after the guru during the prep of the final partition that this problem began. This makes me believe my mountlist is correct and that there is some other problem. I cannot disconnect the Maxtor from the system if I want to use the drive as it must be connected during the binddrivers call for the system to know about the drive (and this is were it hangs). Calling binddrivers again later does not work; I believe this is because there is another drive connected to the 2090 and the first binddrivers call starts the driver. On subsequent calls, binddrivers thinks the device driver is already running and nothing else is needed. Again, thanks for the idea, but my problem does not appear to be the same as yours. -- Scott Thompson, 45261, (IH 6W-207), AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, Il. 60566 VOICE: (312)-979-2237 UUCP: ...!att!ihlpa!sft ARPA: sft@ihlpa.att.com
olson@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Todd Olson) (11/21/89)
Sorry, but I can't reply via Private amil, so I will ask the question here
I also have a Maxtor 3280 (aquired it last week) and need the info to hook
it up to my Kronos controller and get it formatted.
1. How many blocks per track?
2. How many surfaces?
3. And finally how many cylinders?
Thanx in advance,
olson@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.ed
I would also appreciate a copy of someone with a 3280 mountlist.rickf@pnet02.gryphon.com (Rick Flower) (11/22/89)
olson@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Todd Olson) writes: >Sorry, but I can't reply via Private amil, so I will ask the question here >I also have a Maxtor 3280 (aquired it last week) and need the info to hook >it up to my Kronos controller and get it formatted. > 1. How many blocks per track? 24 Blocks per Track.. > 2. How many surfaces? 15 Surfaces.. > 3. And finally how many cylinders? 1224 Cylinders Total.. > >Thanx in advance, >olson@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.ed > >I would also appreciate a copy of someone with a 3280 mountlist. /*-------------------------------------------------------------------------*/ /*- MountLists for V1.3 -*/ /*-------------------------------------------------------------------------*/ /*--------------------------------------------------------------------*/ /*- Define the Reserved Portions of the Various Physical Hard Drives -*/ /*--------------------------------------------------------------------*/ RES3: Device = hddisk.device Priority = 10 Unit = 4 /*- 2nd SCSI Drive -*/ Flags = 0 Surfaces = 15 BlocksPerTrack = 24 Reserved = 2 Interleave = 0 LowCyl = 0 HighCyl = 1 Buffers = 1 BufMemType = 0 # /*-----------------------------------------------------------------------*/ /*- Define a Hard Drive Partition for the Maxtor XT3280 SCSI Hard Drive -*/ /*-----------------------------------------------------------------------*/ FS2: Device = hddisk.device FileSystem = L:FastFileSystem Priority = 10 Unit = 4 Flags = 0 Surfaces = 15 BlocksPerTrack = 24 Reserved = 2 PreAlloc =0 Interleave = 0 LowCyl = 2 HighCyl = 1223 StackSize = 4000 Buffers = 30 BufMemType = 0 Mount = 1 GlobVec = 1 DosType = 0x444F5301 # -------------------------------- What I did was just Prep the RES3: portion (which did the entire drive -- at least that's what it sounded like!) and then just reboot the system and format FS2: P.S. You might need to change the device number.. I've got my system set to SCSI Device #2... Hope that helps! +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Caution, 68k Assembly Language Programmer at Play! | | Support S.A.N.E. (Snails Against Nuclear Energy) | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | UUCP: {ames!elroy, <backbone>}!gryphon!pnet02!rickf | | InterNet: rickf@pnet02.gryphon.com | +=============================================================================+
Doug_B_Erdely@cup.portal.com (11/22/89)
Just a thought... but has anyone checked the termination packs on the Maxtor? - Doug - Doug_B_Erdely@Cup.Portal.Com
sft@cbnewsc.ATT.COM (scott.thompson) (11/23/89)
In article <24338@cup.portal.com> Doug_B_Erdely@cup.portal.com writes: >Just a thought... but has anyone checked the termination packs on the Maxtor? > > - Doug - > >Doug_B_Erdely@Cup.Portal.Com No, how do I check? -- Scott Thompson, 45261, (IH 6W-207), AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, Il. 60566 VOICE: (312)-979-2237 UUCP: ...!att!ihlpa!sft ARPA: sft@ihlpa.att.com
Doug_B_Erdely@cup.portal.com (11/25/89)
The termination packs are located on the pc board right near where the SCSI cable connects. If you have more than one drive on the system, you should take the termination packs off. If the Maxtor is the only one, then the termination packs should be on. The last SCSI device SHOULD be the only unit with the termination pack. - Doug - Doug_B_Erdely@Cup.Portal.Com