DEAN@ENGVAX.SCG.hac.COM (Dean Stephan) (05/19/88)
Hello,
We recently received a pair of 3600's. Since they are running under a
removable media requirement, we can't use the RA82's (we already have
interested parties, so don't bother asking for them). In the process of
installing the equipment, we tried to build a system on the RA82's to
try and near down some of our hardware problems. As a result, I discovered
something rather nasty that may have appeared here before, but people
may not be aware of. An RA82 must be initialized with a cluster size
of greater than 1, but the VMS distribution tape that DEC ships out has
a cluster size of 1 as the initialization size. If you are building a
standalone system for the first time, you will need to find some-one with
a VAX already up and running so you can get a BACKUP image description
that will initialize the disk with a cluster size > 1. This is not
documented in the installation manual that DEC ships with the media.
As a matter of fact, following the instructions in the DEC manual for
the 3600 will never work unless DEC has a special distribution for 3600's
that we didn't receive.
Something to be aware of should you need to build a new system on a
3600 with only RA82's. Or any system that has only RA82's on it.
Dean. (dean@engvax.scg.hac.com)
Disclaimer: My employer is not responsible for the facts, and I am
responsible for my opinions.