mark@intek01.UUCP (Mark McWiggins) (01/30/89)
Thanks to those who jogged my memory about the tricks smart disk controllers can play. I had installed my disk and controller (CDC 94186-383H/DTC 6280) 6 weeks ago and had forgotten that it had a "fake 1024 cyliner mode" to fool dumb OS's that have a 1024-cylinder restriction on disk drives. It also comes with a "keep spare sectors" mode, which tells it to set aside 1 sector per track as an alternate, instead of marking the whole track bad when it found 1 sector. I turned on both of these options when low-level formatting, and VOILA! I got the system up. In my haste upon my initial trouble with my free beta-version Enix (act in haste, repent at leisure) I ordered AT&T Sys V/386. I didn't realize that Everex had inherited the disk set-up procedure straight from AT&T! Aside from the AT&T version being slower, it failed the same way, "253 bad sectors found -- start over at a cylinder other that 0." My disk has 17 sectors/track x 15 heads(tracks)/cylinder x 1224 cylinders = 312120 sectors In other words, the setup procedure wants to abandon the disk as unusable if it finds 1 in every 1233 sectors bad. BARF! As it turns out, I must have a quite reliable disk (with fewer than .1% bad sectors), or even with the controller trick I played I couldn't have gotten the system up. It formatted to just about 300 MB. It's also FAST (14.5 ms access). I love it! Now for the good news. I've been speaking with one of the engineers at Everex, and they seem to be committed to fixing the system. My contact there claims that the other little glitches I've noticed have already been fixed, and the disk handler and setup procedures are being rewritten to accomodate bigger disks. I haven't tried everything yet, but the system seems mostly solid. It does run Xenix 286 binaries as advertised. The system comes up in CGA mode (fixed in the next release, supposedly), but a 5-line C program with an ioctl call took care of that. Console multi-screens work, though the keystroke sequence (ALT-PrintScreen-Fn) is more painful than Xenix's. Supposedly this is remappable, but I don't have much documentation yet, and what I have (marked "Enix System V 386 Release Notes") is not very impressive: no index, weird organization, etc. The system comes with binary X Windows, which installed OK; it came up when I ran it, but I have no docs for it and don't know anything else. And wonder of wonders: sdb works! I haven't had a working source-level debugger in 5 years, not since I worked on a Pyramid running 4.2BSD. (The Xenix 286 version of sdb is a bad joke, for example.) Overall, I'm reserving final judgement, but I think Enix is going to work for me. I'm not sure when they'll be shipping the Real Version, but the contact at Everex is Brian Brinkerhoff (415-683-3649). I have no affiliation with Everex, other than a satisfied user of their tape drive, and a potentially satisfied Enix user. -- Mark McWiggins UUCP: uunet!intek01!mark DISCLAIMER: I could be wrong. INTERNET: intek01!mark@uunet.uu.net (206) 455-9935
fyl@ssc.UUCP (Phil Hughes) (02/02/89)
In article <387@intek01.UUCP>, mark@intek01.UUCP (Mark McWiggins) writes: > Console multi-screens work, though the > keystroke sequence (ALT-PrintScreen-Fn) is more painful than Xenix's. Gee I forgot to read the docs and assumed it was the same as XENIX (ALT-Fn) which I have been using and it works fine. Interesting. > Supposedly this is remappable, but I don't have much documentation yet, > and what I have (marked "Enix System V 386 Release Notes") is not very > impressive: no index, weird organization, etc. The system comes with > binary X Windows, which installed OK; it came up when I ran it, but I > have no docs for it and don't know anything else. I harassed EVEREX about the X docs and a few other missing things. The X docs are at the printer (being translated from Chinese to English :-) ) and hopefully will appear soon. > Overall, I'm reserving final judgement, but I think Enix is going to > work for me. I'm not sure when they'll be shipping the Real Version, > but the contact at Everex is Brian Brinkerhoff (415-683-3649). I hav also been satisfied so far. I am waiting for more hardware to try out some other stuff but generally it seems to be solid (although our 'real' systems are still running XENIX). Let me add a disclaimer concerning a previous posting I made. I said that you get basically the same thing with XENIX, Microport 386, ... . Although I understood what I was attempting to say I expcet it could have been misunderstood. Here is a new version: You get the same basic UNIX (as distributed by AT&T). The differences are 1) systems administration, 2) 286 binary support, 3) DOS support, 4) device drivers, 5) enhancements and 5) customer support. So, pick the version that fits you budget and meets your needs. They all are UNIX but they are all almost UNIX. (clear?) > I have no affiliation with Everex, other than a satisfied user of their > tape drive, and a potentially satisfied Enix user. Me too. -- Phil Hughes, SSC, Inc. P.O. Box 55549, Seattle, WA 98155 (206)FOR-UNIX uw-beaver!tikal!ssc!fyl or uunet!pilchuck!ssc!fyl or attmail!ssc!fyl