blgardne@esunix.UUCP (Blaine Gardner) (04/26/89)
I've just added a SCSI drive (CDC Wren III, 155 meg) to my A2000/A2090A/
KS+WB 1.3/ASDG 2MI system. I've been using an ST506 drive for months
without any problems, but I've just hit a strange problem with
formatting the SCSI drive.
Format drive FH0: name Big0 FFS
displays the message "Formatting cyl 4, 259 to go" and then terminates.
(No error message is displayed, and WHY has nothing useful to say.)
I've tried every trick I can think of, including (GASP!) a stone stock
1.3 WB disk, but I always get the same results. In desperation, I tried
adding the "quick" keyword to the command above, and it worked!
Prep worked fine, and so did formatting a 2 cylinder DH2:, so why can't
I get a regular format to work on the other partitions?
Do I need to do a full format, since the quick format seemed to do the
trick? Am I missing possible bad blocks by using the quick option? I'd
much rather spend hours formatting and get the bad blocks mapped out
than run into trouble later.
Here's my mountlist entry in case I've made some stupid blunder there,
but I just cloned my working ST506 entry, and made the necessary
changes.
/* SCSI drives are units 3 and up */
RES2: Device = hddisk.device
Unit = 3
Flags = 0
Surfaces = 9
BlocksPerTrack = 35
Reserved = 2
Interleave = 0
LowCyl = 0
HighCyl = 1
Buffers = 1
BufMemType = 0
#
/* First FFS partition on the CDC Wren III drive */
CD0: Device = hddisk.device
Unit = 3
Flags = 0
Surfaces = 9
BlocksPerTrack = 35
Reserved = 2
Interleave = 0
LowCyl = 4
HighCyl = 263
Buffers = 1
BufMemType = 0
Stacksize = 4000
GlobVec = -1
FileSystem = L:FastFileSystem
DosType = 0x444F5301
#
--
Blaine Gardner @ Evans & Sutherland 580 Arapeen Drive, SLC, Utah 84108
Here: utah-cs!esunix!blgardne {ucbvax,allegra,decvax}!decwrl!esunix!blgardne
"Nobody will ever need more than 64K." "Nobody needs multitasking on a PC."jesup@cbmvax.UUCP (Randell Jesup) (04/29/89)
In article <1289@esunix.UUCP> blgardne@esunix.UUCP (Blaine Gardner) writes: >I've just added a SCSI drive (CDC Wren III, 155 meg) to my A2000/A2090A/ >KS+WB 1.3/ASDG 2MI system. I've been using an ST506 drive for months >without any problems, but I've just hit a strange problem with >formatting the SCSI drive. > >Format drive FH0: name Big0 FFS First, you say CD0: in your mountlist. Second, FFS isn't needed. >displays the message "Formatting cyl 4, 259 to go" and then terminates. >(No error message is displayed, and WHY has nothing useful to say.) >I've tried every trick I can think of, including (GASP!) a stone stock >1.3 WB disk, but I always get the same results. In desperation, I tried >adding the "quick" keyword to the command above, and it worked! Could be it couldn't get enough contiguous chip memory to pass for the verify option (9 * 36 * 512 bytes = 162K contiguous chip mem). Format currently requires chip mem even if it isn't needed. >Do I need to do a full format, since the quick format seemed to do the >trick? Am I missing possible bad blocks by using the quick option? I'd >much rather spend hours formatting and get the bad blocks mapped out >than run into trouble later. No, the Wren should have mapped out bad blocks for you. Quick is usually fine with SCSI drives. -- Randell Jesup, Commodore Engineering {uunet|rutgers|allegra}!cbmvax!jesup
blgardne@esunix.UUCP (Blaine Gardner) (05/01/89)
From article <6714@cbmvax.UUCP>, by jesup@cbmvax.UUCP (Randell Jesup): > In article <1289@esunix.UUCP> blgardne@esunix.UUCP (Blaine Gardner) writes: >>I've just added a SCSI drive (CDC Wren III, 155 meg) to my A2000/A2090A/ >>KS+WB 1.3/ASDG 2MI system. I've been using an ST506 drive for months >>without any problems, but I've just hit a strange problem with >>formatting the SCSI drive. >>Format drive FH0: name Big0 FFS > First, you say CD0: in your mountlist. Second, FFS isn't > needed. Whoops, a typo there, it should be "Format drive CD0:" as in the mountlist. >>displays the message "Formatting cyl 4, 259 to go" and then terminates. >>(No error message is displayed, and WHY has nothing useful to say.) >>I've tried every trick I can think of, including (GASP!) a stone stock >>1.3 WB disk, but I always get the same results. In desperation, I tried >>adding the "quick" keyword to the command above, and it worked! > Could be it couldn't get enough contiguous chip memory to pass for > the verify option (9 * 36 * 512 bytes = 162K contiguous chip mem). Format > currently requires chip mem even if it isn't needed. No, it isn't fragmented Chip RAM. I just tried it again and it failed just the same way. I've got 330K of contiguous Chip RAM according to Avail. It was something I hadn't thought of though, thanks. >>Do I need to do a full format, since the quick format seemed to do the >>trick? Am I missing possible bad blocks by using the quick option? I'd > No, the Wren should have mapped out bad blocks for you. Quick is > usually fine with SCSI drives. If "quick" works, that's fine by me, I've got more interesting things to do than watch 150 megs of hard drive format the slow way. :-) I do like this drive. I'm getting about 550K/sec with Diskperf, and I was only getting 220K/sec with my ST4096 (ST506 interface). One more question though, with the switch from ST506 to SCSI I've also hit the A2090A's severe slowdown problem when lots of bitplanes are displayed. I've heard rumors that there is a fix available (or RSN) for the A2090A. Is this true, and what do I have to do to get it? Thanks for the info Randell. -- Blaine Gardner @ Evans & Sutherland 580 Arapeen Drive, SLC, Utah 84108 Here: utah-cs!esunix!blgardne {ucbvax,allegra,decvax}!decwrl!esunix!blgardne "Nobody will ever need more than 64K." "Nobody needs multitasking on a PC."
lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca (Larry Phillips) (05/05/89)
In <1289@esunix.UUCP>, blgardne@esunix.UUCP (Blaine Gardner) writes: >Here's my mountlist entry in case I've made some stupid blunder there, >but I just cloned my working ST506 entry, and made the necessary >changes. >/* First FFS partition on the CDC Wren III drive */ >CD0: Device = hddisk.device > Unit = 3 > Flags = 0 > Surfaces = 9 > BlocksPerTrack = 35 > Reserved = 2 > Interleave = 0 > LowCyl = 4 > HighCyl = 263 > Buffers = 1 > BufMemType = 0 > Stacksize = 4000 > GlobVec = -1 > FileSystem = L:FastFileSystem > DosType = 0x444F5301 ># Mountlists look good, but you might try more buffers. I have never been successful formatting a partition with less than 4 buffers. I don't know if that's your problem or not though. The other possibility is that the drive is not low level formatted. If this is the case, then you will have to format it on another machine/controller, since the 2090 will not do a low level format on a SCSI drive. -larry -- - Don't tell me what kind of a day to have! - +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | // Larry Phillips | | \X/ lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca or uunet!van-bc!lpami!lphillips | | COMPUSERVE: 76703,4322 | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+