danielw@wyn386.mi.org (Daniel Wynalda) (03/01/90)
I recently began having some trouble with my SCO Xenix machines not being able to access the floppy drive. I can read/write/format the floppies under DOS with no problem. Xenix doesn't appear to have a problem formatting them but reading/writing to them is giving this error. error on dev floppy (2/52), block=0 cmd=00000003 status=00000002 I only get it on one of two machines -- with a slightly different configuration. I've tried swapping floppy drives, floppy cables, WD1007 controllers, etc. It appeared to have begun having troubles sometime after I installed the WD1007 fix. --- I really don't want to re-install the OS from scratch because it runs 24 terminals. Here's the configuration: Hardware: Mylex 386/20 motherboard 4MB RAM-- recently fixed as well. -- w/ cache WD1007-WAH controller 1.2 MB floppy (Mitsubishi -- I've tried more than 1) 150MB ESDI miniscribe drive. 3- Arnet Smartport-8 cards COM1, COM3, COM4. All have worked for a long time. Generic MONO card (no graphics mode) 1 Parallel port on MONO card. Excelan 205T Ethernet card Software: SCO Xenix 386 2.2.3 Development system (same date) Text Processing System Arnet Xenix drivers Rev 5.08 8/29/88. I'd update to the new version except I can't write to the floppy?! SCO CGI LAN workplace for SCO Xenix 386 (Rel 3.7) SCO Lyrix 6 SCO Online Manual Pages SCO Xenix-NET 1.2 SCO Professional The software, installed with custom, was installed in the order specified above. This tells me that it was PROBABLY not a program installed on the above list (at installation) that caused the problem. It'd have to relink the kernel and the last item (professional) doesn't do that... So the floppy drive worked after the last item was installed. I don't think I've messed with the master file etc on this machine. I had nothing strange to mess with it (it's a runtime machine, basically and nothings really been messed with). Any pointers as to where I should look first would be appreciated. I do have another (2.3.2) 386 Xenix machine online over Xenix-Net. If it's possible to get drivers over into the machine via Xenix-Net, tape drive etc from the other floppy drive, I'd like to do that. The other machine works OK with same software but newer Xenix -- (yes I have multiple copies of everything -- with serial numbers so I ruled out copy protection for now.) Suggestions/hints are welcome. Daniel Wynalda PS. I've recently been tying a bunch of hardware to smart cards (digiboard, arnet etc). These include stripe readers on security doors, Allen & Bradley programmable controllers, counters, etc. It develops a pretty good little monitoring operating system. I just let the daemon's run in the background and it does things just like I'd like them. I've even got SCO CGI linked in to display statistics off printing press monitoring equipment. It's great. What I'd like to do is control some devices at HOME via a serial port. Does anyone know of a way (without being an electrical engineer) to control multiple relay's via RS232, and check their status?? -- A nice cheap blackbox would be GREAT. -- Daniel Wynalda | Telephone: (616) 866-1561 X22 Ham: N8KUD Wynalda Litho Inc. | danielw@wyn386.UUCP danielw@wyn386.mi.org 8221 Graphic Ind Pk. | I believe everyone should be responsible for their own Rockford, MI 49341 | actions. Thus I don't speak for this org. herein.