kranenbu@HLERUL5I.BITNET (02/16/89)
> I would like to know if anyone has succeeded in hooking up the MiniScribe > 9380E to Sun 3/60's SCSI port, and running, via the MD21 ESDI/SCSI > controller/converter. Yes, we have a 9380E as the second disk in a 3/160 with SCSI-board and MD21 converter (running SunOS 3.5). To get it working we had to configure the drive for SOFT-sectored operation and sacrifice one sector on each track. Our initial attempt to format the drive in hard-sectored mode (1218 cyl, 2 spare, 15 head, 35 sec/track) ended with a "Mode Select" failure from the ESDI-controller. According to the Emulex manual, this error message can have a variety of causes, but my guess is that the controller did not accept the geometry parameters passed to it by "diag". Next we jumpered the drive for soft-sectored operation resulting in success- fully completed format operation, but a subsequent surface analysis showed quite a lot of bad sectors most of which (but not ALL!) had sector number 35. The first 20 or so could be re-mapped on spare sectors/cylinders, all the rest produced re-mapping errors (no more spares available). Being pragmatic, we dropped sector 35, resulting in 2 additional bad sectors from the surface-analysis test. So the final disk geometry we settled for is: 1218 cyl, 2 spare, 15 head, 34 sectors/track. (capacity now: 310,5 MBytes). I checked with the supplier, but they could not tell me how many sectors are guaranteed to be usable in soft-sectored mode. Still, we are satisfied since the price per MB nevertheless is very competitive. P. Kranenburg Dept. Comp. Sc. University of Leiden, Netherlands e-mail: kranenbu@hlerul5i.bitnet