rona@hpdml93.HP.COM (ron abramson) (12/22/88)
Scott R. Chilcote writes: > BUT, nine times out of ten, when I run ANY program on the hard disk it will > crash, with between two and seven bombs. If I enable auto-booting on the hard > disk, it will perpetually crash with two bombs. Formatting WITH bad sector > mapping enabled will cause the format program to give a "bad field in CDB" > error before the partitions are installed. And if I use SUPUTIL to go and > map bad sectors later, it gives a "Bad sector in FAT -- Disk unuseable" error. etc., etc... I don't know if this will be a big help, but I too have experienced problems like what you describe. My solution was to play with cable lengths and move the host adaptor away from the drive/controller. At 12 inches, I was okay. At 4 inches I had trouble. Also, I tried to route the cables so that would go directly away from the host adaptor. The bottom line is, the system can be highly susceptable to noise. And what was really funny was that I never had any trouble with my fairly slow 20 MB drives, but when I put the 300 MB drive on there, I had to get very careful. Co-workers of mine have used the exact same drive on their ST's and haven't had any trouble. Anyway, I would try moving things around rather than just shielding. GOOD LUCK!!! Ron Abramson
ritchie@hpldola.HP.COM (Dave Ritchie) (12/23/88)
How long are the cables between the various boards and between the host adapter and the DMA port of the ST. It seems that this can be a problem in some cases. Dave
to_stdnet@stag.UUCP (12/23/88)
From: dynasoft!john@stag.UUCP (John Stanley) [src@xanth.cs.odu.edu (Scott R. Chilcote) writes...] > I purchased a Supra Host Adapter/controller, and added an Adaptek 4070 > SCSI --> RLL controller to it. For the drive I bought a Seagate ST-277R > 65 Megabyte hard disk. [...] > The switching supply I > bought has plenty of power for two drives, and doesn't even get warm running > one. I've tested the outputs, though, and it does what it should. If you didn't test it -while- the system is reading from the drive for a number of secconds at a time, you haven't tested it in-use. Marginal parts would place more of a load on the system while accessing the drive and overload the supply... But, if we assume that you -have- tested it in-use...: > BUT, nine times out of ten, when I run ANY program on the hard disk it will > crash, with between two and seven bombs. If I enable auto-booting on the hard > disk, it will perpetually crash with two bombs. Formatting WITH bad sector > mapping enabled will cause the format program to give a "bad field in CDB" > error before the partitions are installed. And if I use SUPUTIL to go and > map bad sectors later, it gives a "Bad sector in FAT -- Disk unuseable" error. What's so misterious? You probably have a bad drive with a major concentration of problems in a critical area of the drive. The remainder of your message just supports this idea... The problem is probably in the head circuit on the drive itself. If you access a large number of sectors very-very quickly (as you do at boot time or when running a program) it can't maintain signal levels high enough to drive the controller... One other possibility could be emf from some nearby source. If your drive is sitting next to a speaker, tv, or even your ST monitor, try moving it at least two feet away and trying again. If that fails, deepsix the drive and get a good one... -- PS: Please(!) note that my Reply-To address gets munged by the gateway I'm currently using for news access so you can't just <r>eply to this article and have your message get to me. Please use the address below. --- John Stanley (dynasoft!john@stag.UUCP) Software Consultant / Dynasoft Systems