Bill_von_Hagen@transarc.com (01/06/91)
I'm having a lot of problems reading tapes (and therefore booting) my
system, and hoped that someone could tell me what's going on, or at least
explain the error messages I'm getting.
My system is an 8-meg Sun 2/50 attached to a Sun3 (I think) shoebox
containing a Toshiba MK 156 disk and a Wangtek 5099EN24 tape drive. The
2/50 passes all of its disgnostics with no problem, yet when I fire up the
shoebox and try to boot from tape ("b st()"), the tape drive grinds for a
while, but eventually returns the message "st: sense error". The tapes
are QIC-11 3.5 boot tapes for a 68010, so I believe that what's on them is
correct. I also have another Wangtek drive and SYSGEN board stuffed,
frankenstein-fashion, into an old PC drive box. When I shut down the
shoebox, hook up the latter, and try to boot, I get the error message "st:
error 96A0". Help! HELP!!
I can't find anywhere in the standard doc set that explains these
messages, and the 2/50 technical docs that I have don't discuss these
types of errors. I'd really appreciate any help anyone could give me.
Right now I have a lot of useless hardware. How useful it will be when I
get it running is debatable, but I'd at least like to get it running!!!
Another, related, question - do I have to terminate the SCSI out on the
showbox, or is that handled internally?
Thanks very much!
Bill (wvh@transarc.com)justice@chinet.chi.il.us (Michael A. Justice) (01/14/91)
I have had a similar (or the same) problem with my SLC and WangTek QIC-150 drive. Not sure of the drive's part number, sorry. Oh, my hard drive's a Fujitsu M2263SA (the 660mb one) in case it's relevant. Also, I've taken out the terminating resistors from the tape drive, and am using an external terminator instead. BTW, I haven't run across the "96A0" error. Is it a different drive model??? During my initial setup, I got a "sense key" error when the tape drive was attempting to load the "usr" files. I thought I'd received a bad tape, and got another one; this one loaded on the first try, but ONLY on that first try. A couple of days later, when I was about to mail the "defective tapes" back, I figured I'd better check to make sure I was really sending back the bad set. I attempted to reinstall, found that I'd nearly kept the "bad" ones, and tried to reinstall the other set. Also bad, and with the same error (usually on the same block of the file, too). It only worked that one time. My VAR thinks it's a bad PROM, and has had me replace the original PROM twice. The new ones haven't even been able to begin reading the tapes, so I've left the original one in. (At least it worked that one time.) Last time I talked to him, he mentioned swapping drives if the latest new PROM didn't work (which it didn't). The drive seems to read/write single large files (tar) just fine; I have no good guess as to what's wrong. You might want to try-and-try-again repeatedly; mine did work that one single solitary time (out of about six tries with the original worked-once PROM, and six with the two "new-and-improved" PROMs). >Another, related, question - do I have to terminate the SCSI out on the >showbox, or is that handled internally? My tape drive had two resistors in sockets next to the SCSI plug, which were for termination. I pulled 'em and am using an external terminator, though -- more convenient. I don't know if there're any negatives to doing that. >Thanks very much! No prob. Sorry this isn't much help. If you (or anyone else) has any idea of what would fix this, I'd appreciate a copy of the message! (Thanks!) Also, does 'install' write the disk files as it's reading the tape file, or does it read the whole tape file into a blank spot on the disk and then write out all of the disk files? I've probably got some clobbered files if it's the first way (although nothing has seemed to break yet). Michael Justice / 2250 N Lincoln Ave. #203 / Chicago, IL 60068 / (312) 404-1493 ...{mcdchg|gargoyle|hombre|orbit}!chinet!justice OR justice@chinet.chi.il.us justice@gagme.chi.il.us and Real Soon Now: justice@??????? :-)