sbanner1@uvicctr.UUCP (S. John Banner) (04/22/88)
Hello, Now that Summer is here, I have time to work on getting
Minix going on my new HardDrive. The standard driver (Version 1.1)
gives me "Unrecoverable read errors" on what seems like random sectors
(about 1 in 10 sectors comes out bad I think), even though all of the
programs I have tried under DOS say that the harddrive is fine. If
anyone has come accross this before, please let me know before I have
to re-invent the wheel. By the way, my machine is a 4.77MHz XT clone
incase that matters at all, with a V20 CPU.
Thanks in advance,
S. John Banner
...!uw-beaver!uvicctr!sol!sbanner1
...!ubc-vision!uvicctr!sol!sbanner1
ccsjb@uvvm
sbanner1@sol.UVIC.CDNbrb@akgua.ATT.COM (Brian R. Bainter) (04/25/88)
From article <389@uvicctr.UUCP>, by sbanner1@uvicctr.UUCP (S. John Banner): > > Hello, Now that Summer is here, I have time to work on getting > Minix going on my new HardDrive. The standard driver (Version 1.1) > gives me "Unrecoverable read errors" on what seems like random sectors > (about 1 in 10 sectors comes out bad I think), even though all of the > programs I have tried under DOS say that the harddrive is fine. If > anyone has come accross this before, please let me know before I have > to re-invent the wheel. By the way, my machine is a 4.77MHz XT clone > incase that matters at all, with a V20 CPU. > > Thanks in advance, > > S. John Banner I had a similar problem with putting MINIX on my machine. I also buggered up many a DOS partition (fortunately I backed up my disk first). My particular problem was caused by having an RLL controller on my hard drive instead of a normal controller. An RLL controller will give you approximately 50% more disk capacity on a given drive. There are some controllers out now that will give you 100% or so more capacity. If you have one of those, you will have to take proper measures for that particular controller. If your controller is indeed the RLL type which gives you the 50%, you might look in to increasing your sectors per track in wini.c and fsck.c. Mine went from the original 17 (11 hex) to 25 (19 hex). After this was done, I have had no more problems with MINIX on my hard drive. If you have an RLL controller of the variety which gives you more than a 50% increase in capacity, you will have to do some checking to get the sectors per track. It might be a good idea to do this anyway. When I asked a dealer what the sectors per track for my controller was, he said that it was either 25 or 26 and that it depended pretty much on the controller. Good Lock, Brian R. Bainter
jgo@mcgp1.UUCP (John Opalko, N7KBT) (04/28/88)
I'm having similar problems with my 30M hard card. It's got a LaPine disk and an OMTI RLL controller. Any and all information would be appreciated. Thanks, John Opalko uw-beaver!tikal!mcgp1!jgo
ncoverby@ndsuvax.UUCP (Glen Overby) (04/29/88)
There have been a lot of questions recently about how to bring up Minix
on Western Digital and other "foreign" (i.e. Non-IBM) controlers. This
was a big problem from the start, and several people have hacked up
xt_wini.c to handle the WD controlers. You can get wd_wini.c from many
of the archive sites on Usenet, Bitnet and the Internet. I know bugs.nosc.mil
and ndsuvm1.bitnet have it.
See the Minix Information Sheet for information on accessing these sites.
If there is much demand for this info sheet, I'll post it with an extended
expiration date so that it may be used as a reference to newcomers.
--
Glen Overby
Bitnet: ncoverby@ndsuvax
UUCP: {uunet, ihnp4!umn-cs}!ndsuvax!ncoverbyakhwand@fergvax.unl.edu (Mahmood Akhwand) (04/30/88)
glen,
can i also get the minix information sheet, and also i have
a st238 drive with an RLL controller and would like to
get the driver for it.
akhwand
akhwand@fergvax.unl.edusbanner1@uvicctr.UUCP (S. John Banner) (05/07/88)
In article <1783@akgua.ATT.COM> brb@akgua.ATT.COM (Brian R. Bainter) writes: >From article <389@uvicctr.UUCP>, by sbanner1@uvicctr.UUCP (S. John Banner): >> >> Hello, Now that Summer is here, I have time to work on getting >> Minix going on my new HardDrive. The standard driver (Version 1.1) >> gives me "Unrecoverable read errors" on what seems like random sectors >> S. John Banner >you will have to do some checking to get the sectors per track. It might be a >good idea to do this anyway. When I asked a dealer what the sectors per track >for my controller was, he said that it was either 25 or 26 and that it depended >pretty much on the controller. > > Good Lock, > > Brian R. Bainter Thanks to all those of you who sent suggestions, I got it working last night, the problem was apparently that I was using 25 sectors per track, and I should have been using 26 (the responses here were the first to mention that it might require 26, not 25, and I am not a hardware type, so ... :-). Thanks again to everyone who helped, sjb.
bunda@im4u.UUCP (John Bunda) (05/24/88)
> See the Minix Information Sheet for information on accessing these sites. > If there is much demand for this info sheet, I'll post it with an extended > expiration date so that it may be used as a reference to newcomers. > -- Please do! /john -- ........................................................................ John Bunda UT CS Dept. Show me a perfectly good airplane, bunda@im4u Austin, Texas and I won't jump out of it...