[comp.os.minix] Seagate ST225 problems: THE solution

baron@wiesje.hobby.nl (Wim `Blue Baron' van Dorst) (04/01/91)

Hello *,

Several people of late have been asking about Seagate ST225 Hard Disks,
and discussed all kind of problems.  The patch below solves all these,
as these problems stem from two things only:

1	The ST225 has only 1 drive type instead of two, and it is
	different from the default ones.

2	The OMTI controller, often found in combination with the ST225,
	doesn't know about the proper drive parameters combination. I 
	have checked all 128 combinations, and there is no good one in.

So I picked the best drive parameter combination, set the drive type
accordingly, and hard coded the rest (No.  Heads == 4).  Below is
included the patch for the xt_wini.c.  This HD driver now runs on
Wiesje (my 8088 XT) for about four years (started on Minix 1.1), and
has shown no further problems.

NOTE that the drive parameter information is now hardcoded in the driver 
as there is no other way :-(, which makes the driver useless for other 
hard disks, but this is the only way to get the ST225 to work properly.

If this patch is useful for you, please drop me a line stating so. 
I always like to hear of a good job done.

Met vriendelijke groeten, Wim `Blue Baron' van Dorst.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Blue Baron = Wim van Dorst, Voice (+31) 074-443937, (+31) 02152-42319
(-:       baron@wiesje.hobby.nl           tgcpwd@urc.tue.nl       :-)
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end



Hello to you, who will read this,

For fun let me tell you that I had the drive type adapted in the
beginning, and all seemed to work well. 

Only when I switched from Minix on partition 1 (1 MB), 2 (1 MB) and 3
(10 MB) to Dos on partition 4 (8 MB) I noticed oddities.  Especially
after I put quite some stuff on partition 3 so that it filled several
MB it appeared to spoil the Dos partition.  Not knowing where the
trouble came from I formatted the Dos partition, and switching back to
Minix my partition 3 was totally screwed up.  I made a new file system
and looked to the Dos partitio nto check (all Ok), I put some files in
the file system and checked the Dos partition again (all Ok).  Then I
loaded the Minix partition full, worked and found out afterwards I had
screwed my Dos partition again. 

Well, after formatting the complete disk several times I thought a good
HD debugging session was called for, and that how I found out about the
stupid controller, telling two heads instead of four, thus the first MB
is spread out over 2 MB, the second MB over the 3-4 MB and so the
partition 3 over MB 5-6, 7-8, 9-10, 11-12...., so that after putting
more than 3 real MB on partition 3 the bytes spilled over on partition 4.

I thought that this enlightment on my experiences with the ST225 would
show you a pitfall not expected.  As it is not adding something to the
patch above I appended it here, instead of putting this text in the 
announcement on the top.

Hoping to hear from you that the HD ST225 on your system now runs fine
too, met vriendelijke groeten, Wim `Blue Baron' van Dorst.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Blue Baron = Wim van Dorst, Voice (+31) 074-443937, (+31) 02152-42319
(-:       baron@wiesje.hobby.nl           tgcpwd@urc.tue.nl       :-)
---------------------------------------------------------------------