da_collins@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au (12/10/90)
A few months ago we replaced the disk drive in our UNISYS PW/2 Model 800 Novell File Server. The new drive was a WREN VIHH ESDI unit connected to a 6280-15T Controller from Data Technology (a division of QUME). This drive has 1747 cylinders (more than the DOS & OS/2 limit of 1024) but we were assured that it would work under NOVELL Adv Netware 2.15C. During installation of the Netware however, the installation software insisted that the maximum number of cylinders for the partition was 1747-1024 = 723 cylinders even though I specified the full number of cylinders. Once again I was assured that this was OK and just an aberation in the behaviour of the installation software! So, I proceeded, and the system came up and runs as expected. However, it seems that once the disk is filled beyond the limit of the 723 cylinders, the boot loader is corrupted and when the machine is powered down and re-booted, the contents of some file of the system (apparently random?) is printed on the screen instead of the normal boot messages - the system then hangs! It can however still be booted from floppy by booting DOS and executing the Operating system file NET$OS. When this is done, the system runs as normal with no missing files and complete access to the problem drive. Has anyone else had this problem? Does anyone have any suggestions? (Should I read the manual ;-) Thanks in advance Darryl Collins Department of Surgery University of Western Australia QEII Medical Centre Nedlands, PERTH, WA 6009 email: da_collins@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au