brian@contex.UUCP (Brian Love) (12/06/89)
I'm having trouble hooking a Hitachi 80Mb (DK511-8) to my 2090A controller. After several tries I've managed to get it formatting, but it has never completed successfully. The first problem is with bad blocks. The 'prep' program asks for bad block information in the form "cylinder;head;offset". The slip of paper on the hard disk gives the bad block information in the form "cylinder;head;sector;position;length". The first bad block is listed: cyl 73, head 2, sector 0, position 270, length 2 I tried: 1) 73;0;270 Equate position with offset 2) 73;0;0 Equate sector with offset 3) 73;0;270 and 73;0;271 1) plus length 4) 73;0;0 and 73;0;1 2) plus length When formatting DH1:, it gets up to cylinder 73, gronks and dies - "format failed". Next I tried completely omitting entering any bad blocks. Now during format, the disk gets all the way up to cylinder 163 (past 2 bad blocks), then gronks and dies with the same message. Finally, just to see if the disk worked, I set the last cylinder of the first partition to cylinder 160. It seems to format fine, but at the end I get "Not a DOS disk in Unit 2". :-( One last thing, with the Hitachi hooked up, I always get a disk error on my first Rodime on booting up the system. It's not fatal and does not require any operator intervention, but it does concern me. Can anyone help??? Brian C. Love
brian@contex.UUCP (Brian Love) (12/06/89)
E-mail: contex!brian@uunet.uu.net OR bcl@andrew.cmu.edu Phone : (617) 245-9004 x5578 @work OR (617) 395-4476 @home
brian@contex.UUCP (Brian Love) (12/11/89)
I've got more information regarding my Hitachi DK511-8 troubles. I snared another drive for comparisons and it produces the same results. 1) Any bad blocks entered to prep are a problem. 2) Formatting is unsuccessful on any cylinder higher than 162! 3) I can format a partition from 2-162, however when the system is powered up, DH1: does not get mounted. 4) And to top everything off, the reliability of the Rodime 3055 on unit 0 suffers; nothing fatal but lots of disk errors. The Hitachi is factory-configured to be soft-sectored with 32 256-byte sectors per track. Using BlocksPerTrack=32 in the mountlist didn't work; I found I had to use BlocksPerTrack=17 (The Hitachi manual alludes to a 17 512-byte soft-sectored mode). One non-Amiga techie suggested that my controller probably wants a hard-sectored device. Any comments? I appreciate those of you who've read this far. Assuming I can't get this working with your help, who should I turn to? Joe Dealer? Commodore/CATS? I wish I had more detailed technical info on my 2090a controller... Brian C. Love E-mail: contex!brian@uunet.uu.net OR bcl@andrew.cmu.edu Phone : (617) 245-9004 x5578 @work OR (617) 395-4476 @home
ricks@eagle.iscs.com (Rick Schaeffer 99) (12/15/89)
In article <874@contex.UUCP> brian@contex.UUCP (Brian Love) writes: > > 4) And to top everything off, the reliability of the Rodime 3055 > on unit 0 suffers; nothing fatal but lots of disk errors. > Sounds to me like you might have both drives terminated. I know that only the last drive in the chain can have terminating resistors in it under SCSI...I'm not so sure about ST506. Your symptoms sure sound like a termination problem, though. -- Rick Schaeffer UUCP: uunet!isc-br.isc-br.com!ricks ISC-Bunker Ramo ricks@isc-br.isc-br.com Box TAF-C8 Phone: (509)927-5114 Spokane, WA 99220
brian@contex.UUCP (Brian Love) (12/18/89)
I should have been clearer in my posts. The Hitachi DK511-8 is an 80Mb drive with an ST506 interface. Sorry for the confusion on this. Brian C. Love E-mail: contex!brian@uunet.uu.net OR bcl@andrew.cmu.edu Phone : (617) 245-9004 x5578 @work OR (617) 395-4476 @home