bach@USCN.BITNET (BitNet Users Of Southern Tech) (08/08/89)
Help!!!!!!!!! I've got serious problems with my ST277N. I was playing a game(Sword of Sodan) and I think it did something to screw up my drive. My current system is a 2500 with a A2090a controller and a Rodime 40 meg st506 drive. I also have a Seagate ST277n SCSI drive. When I try to boot my system I get a requestor saying that GH2: is not a dos disk. No problem. I'll just reformat the drive, after all, I just did backups yesterday(LUCKY!!). So when I try to reformat the drive the format program says that it is formating track 3 of 403. It stays on there for a minute or so and then quits.... I figured that I had serious problems so I thought I would go through the whole low-level format procedure, but when I run Prep it comes back with Drive not Preped What a wonderful informative error message. I guess it's obvious what the next step is, but since I get see it could someone help me out... I'm at a loss as to what to do next. BTW, please send your email to me since my feed through the server has been acting up lately. Thanks. Shawn Hayes PS: I did power down a couple of times during the reformat procedure to see if it could clear up the problem.
bach@USCN.BITNET (BitNet Users Of Southern Tech) (08/09/89)
Hi. I've gotten some suggestions on how to fix my problem, but so far I've
had no luck in fixing it so I thought I should give some more information.
I've got an Amiga 2500 with a Rodime(st506) drive and a Seagate 277n(SCSI)
drive hooked up to a 2090a controller. The problem I'm having is with the
SCSI drive. The Seagate is split into 3 partitions: RES2:, GH1:, and GH2:.
The problem is that the partition GH1 is causing a 'Not a DOS disk error.'
The second partition on that drive, GH2, still work s fine.
I've tried everything I can think of to bring it back with no luck.
When I tried to do a complete format of the partition I got the message
Formatting track 3, 403 to go
and the program ran for about 15 seconds before my system locked up.
When I tried to Format the partition in Quick mode I got the message
Format failed - cannot open device
I've tried re-Preping the drive, but all I get is
Device not PREPed.
I'm at a loss as to the next step. It really suprises me that the first
partition can be so screwed and the second partition works so well.
Luckily I did backups the day before the problem occured. Whew!!!!
Just in case the information may help here is the way the SCSI unit is
layed out in my Mountlist.
GH1:
Device = hddisk.device
FileSystem = l:FastFileSystem
Unit = 3
Flags = 0
Surfaces = 6
BlocksPerTrack = 26
Reserved = 2
Interleave = 3
LowCyl = 3 ; HighCyl = 405
Buffers = 32
GlobVec = -1
BufMemType = 0
Mount = 1
DosType = 0x444F5301
StackSize = 4000
#
GH2:
Device = hddisk.device
FileSystem = l:FastFileSystem
Unit = 3
Flags = 0
Surfaces = 6
BlocksPerTrack = 26
Reserved = 2
Interleave = 3
LowCyl = 406
HighCyl = 811
Buffers = 32
GlobVec = -1
BufMemType = 0
Mount = 0
DosType = 0x444F5301
StackSize = 4000
#
RES2: Device = hddisk.device
Unit = 3
Flags = 0
Surfaces = 6
BlocksPerTrack = 26
Reserved = 2
LowCyl = 0 ; HighCyl = 2
Buffers = 1
BufMemType = 5
#leyse@voltron.SRC.Honeywell.COM (Todd Leyse) (08/12/89)
In article <89080821400266A.ADEN@USCN.USCN.UGA.EDU> bach@USCN.BITNET writes: >Hi. I've gotten some suggestions on how to fix my problem, but so far I've >had no luck in fixing it so I thought I should give some more information. They sound similar to my problems. > >I've got an Amiga 2500 with a Rodime(st506) drive and a Seagate 277n(SCSI) >drive hooked up to a 2090a controller. The problem I'm having is with the >SCSI drive. The Seagate is split into 3 partitions: RES2:, GH1:, and GH2:. >The problem is that the partition GH1 is causing a 'Not a DOS disk error.' >The second partition on that drive, GH2, still work s fine. I have an Amiga 2000 with 2090A and Seagate 296N. I haven't been able to get mine to work for the first partition (DH2:) so I haven't even tried others. I get the same error on DH2:. > >I've tried everything I can think of to bring it back with no luck. Me too. >When I tried to do a complete format of the partition I got the message >Formatting track 3, 403 to go >and the program ran for about 15 seconds before my system locked up. Mine too, 'cept I was going from 2 to 5 so I go track 2, 3 to go. Drive light stayed on, but no activity. >I've tried re-Preping the drive, but all I get is >Device not PREPed. Me too. I tried powering up the Amiga with the drive off, then plugging the drive in, then preping res2: which would go off for a little bit and then say Device not PREPed. My Mountlist: Work: Device = hddisk.device FileSystem = l:FastFileSystem Unit = 3 Flags = 0 Surfaces = 6 BlocksPerTrack = 34 Reserved = 2 Interleave = 0 LowCyl = 6 ; HighCyl = 100 Buffers = 32 GlobVec = -1 BufMemType = 0 Mount = 1 DosType = 0x444F5301 StackSize = 4000 # RES2: Device = hddisk.device Unit = 3 Flags = 0 Surfaces = 6 BlocksPerTrack = 34 Reserved = 2 LowCyl = 0 ; HighCyl = 1 Buffers = 1 BufMemType = 0 # Thanks in advance for any help you can give. Todd Todd C Leyse MN65-2100 Honeywell Systems and Research Center Voice: (612)782-7380 Snail: 3660 Technology Dr., Minneapolis, MN 55418 Amiga: Not Available yet Internet: leyse@moon.honeywell.com UUCP: leyse@srcsip.uucp Bang: {umn-cs,ems,bthpyd}!srcsip!leyse
bach%USCN.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu (BitNet Users Of Southern Tech) (08/15/89)
Well so far I've gotten some suggestions from fellow users, but unfortunately notthing has helped so far. Also I got one message from a fellow 2500 owner who has a Seagate 296N instead of the 277N that I have, but he has the same problems Some of you have suggested that the first partition, RES2:, should have only two cylinders allocated to it. This might make sense except for a what seems to be yet another limitation in the Prep software. I've got a couple of questions that maybe someone from Commodore can answer. 1) Why doesn't Prep support changing the interleave on a HD? 2) Why is the minimum cylinder for parking the heads set to 2? This doesn't allow the user to have the heads parked over the two reserved tracks in the reservered partition, RES?:. That means that one of the tracks used for storing data must be used for a parking track. This doesn't seem to be a good idea. 3) Last, has anyone seen and solved the problem I've been having? I've tried changing the mountlist has some people have suggested with no effect. I tend to think that even if I format the drive with one partition I'll have the same problem. There has to be some fundamental problem that can cause PREP to fail, and FORMAT to lockup. I've spoken to my dealer, but he hasn't any idea of what could be causing the problem. There are no loose cables or any other obvious hardware problems. Thanks for any help that you can offer. Shawn Hayes Bach@uscn.edu
bach%USCN.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu (BitNet Users Of Southern Tech) (08/26/89)
Well, I'm happy to report that the problems with my drive have finally been solved. I don't know what happened to it, other than the system was confused, but the fix was to take my Seagate 277n drive out of my A2500 and hook it up to a Trump controller card. Once the drive was formatted on the Trump card it worked perfectly on my machine. I don't know why Prep and format couldn't handle the drive. It appears that it is possible to confuse Prep so much that it won't format a good drive. So if you start seeing Device not Preped and your sure the hardware is good try hooking the drive up to another controller. It just might fix your problems Shawn Hayes Bach@Uscn.edu PS: Did the guy who was making a modified Low-level format program for the 2090A controller ever get it donee? I'd like to try different interleave values on my drive if possible.