LANCER@GACVAX1.BITNET (Lance A. Brown) (02/12/90)
Hi, I have been running Minix 1.3 and 1.4 for some time now. I have just today encountered a very strange problem. My computer ( 286 ) had an ST-225 with an Everex 16-bit floppy/hd controller in it. I recently upgraded my hard drive to an ST-251-1 on the same controller. For the last 3 weeks I have had both drives in my system with the 251 as C and the 225 as D. Everything worked fine and dandy. Two days ago I removed the 225 and delivered it to my friend who had bought it from me. Yesterday I booted Minix 1.4b kernel and had a problem loading the root file system from /dev/hd3 where it has been since I bought the 251. I rebooted and slapped an RFS disk into at0 and booted that way. I was then able to mount /dev/hd2 (on the 251) onto /usr. wait, it gets better! Today I tried to boot Minix 1.4 kernel as usual and was again unable to get the RFS to load from /dev/hd3. I booted up with a diskette RFS and tried to mount /dev/hd2 /usr so I could go to work, and it FAILED miserably. The drive light did not even flicker. I then mounted a /usr diskette I keep for emergencies and tried to mount the hd2, hd3 and hd4 again. All failed with unable to read block errors. I tried a mkfs on hd4 ( my temp partition ) and that failed also. Apparently my controller doesn't like Minix anymore. I have no idea what is wrong. Apparently by removing the 225 from the system I have made something mad at me. I have no idea where to go from here. Anyone have any ideas as to what might be wrong. Lance A. Brown Lancer@GacVax1.Bitnet
rlb@cs.odu.edu (Robert L. Bailey) (02/13/90)
In article <MINIX-L%90021115300656@NDSUVM1.BITNET> INFO-MINIX@UDEL.EDU writes: >Hi, > I have been running Minix 1.3 and 1.4 for some time now. I have just today >encountered a very strange problem. My computer ( 286 ) had an ST-225 with >an Everex 16-bit floppy/hd controller in it. I recently upgraded my hard drive >to an ST-251-1 on the same controller. For the last 3 weeks I have had both >drives in my system with the 251 as C and the 225 as D. Everything worked >fine and dandy. > Two days ago I removed the 225 and delivered it to my friend who had bought >it from me. Yesterday I booted Minix 1.4b kernel and had a problem loading the >root file system from /dev/hd3 where it has been since I bought the 251. I >rebooted and slapped an RFS disk into at0 and booted that way. I was then > I have no idea what is wrong. Apparently by removing the 225 from the >system I have made something mad at me. I have no idea where to go from here. >Anyone have any ideas as to what might be wrong. > >Lance A. Brown No guarantees, but, my guess would be that your drive does not have a resistor pack to terminate the data lines. Most (if not all) drives have a socket for the termination resistor pack. It should only be installed on LAST drive. Most likely, your 225 had the resistor pack installed and all was fine. When you installed the second drive the resistor pack was still there (in the original drive). Now that you have removed the 225, the resistor pack is gone which leaves the data line un-terminated. This can cause some very erratic behavior sometimes. Moral of the story: check to see if you have a resistor pack installed on the drive. If not, you should see a empty socket near the 50 pin cable. If you don't have it, get one and install it. Bob Bailey
lloyd@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Lloyd Parkes) (02/14/90)
I once spent three days trying to do exactly what you are doing, you must make sure that you have a resistor terminator pack on the drive at the end of the cable. This drive is normally C:. This would have been your 225, but now I assume it is the 251. Lloyd ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Lloyd | lloyd@comp.vuw.ac.nz | "... I can gleek upon occasion." - Parkes | ...!uunet!vuwcomp!lloyd | Nick Bottom ------------------------------------------------------------------------