drc@wp3b01.UUCP (3964 ) (07/15/88)
Hi, I seem to have a real problem here. The floppy drive on my UNIX-PC has died and seems to have taken the whole system with it. Here is the scene: I was working away on a new version of STEVIE/vi and decided it was time for a backup. I whipped out one of my trusty unformatted floppies and slapped it into the drive. Flipping over to the UA I went into the floppy disk menu and called up format. The floppy drive lights went on as usual, and I got some errors in the UA window (immediately). Like -- Illegal instruction, core dumped. The UA window immediately died (odd to say the least). At this point I noticed the status manager had died. I tried to spawn a full screen UNIX window. Nothing happened. I tried again and got the following panic message: baddma: FEFF FDERR ST:0 TR:0 SR:1 DR:0 DMACNT: FEFF DCRREG: F4 MCRREG: 9D00 baddma: FEFF panic I/O error in push Double panic I/O error in push Press Hardware reset to reboot Needless to say I knew this was not good. I reached around and pushed the hardware reset. Screen clears, two blocks are printed on the screen, light comes on on the floppy drive and more blocks keep printing... Hmmm... very bad, I say I reach around and turn her off. Now the waiting game. Come back in a hour still no go same problem. Try to put in the diagnostic disk. No go It does not even seem to read it (at least no menu). Now to the meat of the matter. First some background. I have a lot of experience with UNIX (I have been using it since version 6 on a PDP-11 in my college days), I am a hacker at heart but no hardware expert. I have had my UNIX-PC since last november (bought it in during the fire sale), but have only had net access since mid feb. 88. The machine is actually a 3B1, 2M, full development kit, OBM used for uucp connection to uunet. It is out of warranty and not under service contract so no help coming from ATT. What I need to know is, anyone else had a similar problem? Assuming I have to replace the floppy what is compatable? I would not mind tring a 1.2M floppy (that could read my old backups etc). What is involved with yanking the floppy and replacing it? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated... BTW: I have used a lot of DEC equipment so I know a VAX is dead in the water without a console floppy, but I sure miss not being able to set the boot address to a given device like I could on the PDP-11/70's. How come I can't (somehow) boot my PC directly off the hard disk? This is very annoying. Please attempt e-mail any responses. Thanks in advance Darrel Carver ...!{killer, ihnp4}!wp3b01!drc Work phone (914) 397-4265 ATTMAIL: dcarver Home phone (914) 761-7941