[comp.sys.sun] Sun 669MB disk & SunOS 4.0.3

mcmorran@ll.mit.edu (Roy A. McMorran) (02/20/91)

I recently took delivery of a shiny new 669 MB SCSI hard disk (Sun EXP or
some such, I believe it's a Micropolis 1588-15 under the hood) and
connected it to my SPARCStation 1.  After having some trouble with the
formatting,  I called Sun for some assistance.  After some diagnosis I was
told that this drive is "not supported" under my rev. (4.0.3) of SunOS (a
fact that my friendly sales rep. didn't mention when I was ordering- he
assumed I had 4.1, an honest mistake I suppose).

So now I am presented with two options: Buy (yes buy) a patch from Sun for
300 bucks, or upgrade my OS (no I don't have support :-() for some larger
number of bucks.  However, funds are not available to  buy this stuff
right now. It seems to me that this patch should be provided free of
charge given the circumstances...

Any comments or suggestions from the net would be welcomed.

Roy McMorran          |mcmorran@ll.mit.edu| The above should not be construed
MIT Lincoln Laboratory|                   | as an official statement of MIT
244 Wood St. B261     |(617) 981-4010     | Lincoln Laboratory or of any 
Lexington, MA 02173   |                   | US Goverment agency.

pearmana@prl.philips.co.uk (Andy Pearman) (03/16/91)

In article <1698@brchh104.bnr.ca> mcmorran@ll.mit.edu (Roy A. McMorran) writes:

>I recently took delivery of a shiny new 669 MB SCSI hard disk (Sun EXP or
>some such, I believe it's a Micropolis 1588-15 under the hood) and
>connected it to my SPARCStation 1.  After having some trouble with the
>formatting,  I called Sun for some assistance.  After some diagnosis I was
>told that this drive is "not supported" under my rev. (4.0.3) of SunOS (a
>fact that my friendly sales rep. didn't mention when I was ordering- he
>assumed I had 4.1, an honest mistake I suppose).

We made the same mistake, although we now have it running on a SS1+
running SunOS 4.0.3.

To get it to work, do the following:

1) Format the disk using 4.1 install tape (just load mini Unix etc so that
   you can run format).

2) Partition the disk as required whilst still in 4.1's format.

3) Run newfs on either a system running 4.1 or a Sun 3 running 4.0.3
   (Sun 3 kernels seem to have more configured into them than ss1's/)

3) Transfer disk to Sparc running 4.0.3 and restore file systems onto it.

NOTE: if disk needs to have newfs run on it, transfer it back to a Sun 3
or a 4.1 system to do it.

Hope this helps,
Andy Pearman, Computer Dept, Philips Research Labs, Redhill, Surrey, England. 
              pearmana@prl.philips.co.uk