[comp.unix.aux] CDC Wren IV's on A/UX

angel@umigw.MIAMI.EDU (angel li) (11/03/88)

I have a CDC Wren IV drive which I have initialized with SF&I.  It is bootable
and I have been using it as a system disk.  I would now like to use it as
an A/UX system disk but I don't know how to get A/UX loaded on it.  Has
anyone done this?  Will I have to get a commercial device driver for this?

By the way, what is the exact size of a Wren IV?  I initialized it with
a huge number of blocks since I don't plan to fill it up with native Mac OS
software.
-- 
Angel Li
University of Miami/RSMAS

Internet: angel@flipper.miami.edu			UUCP: ncar!umigw!angel

kaufman@polya.Stanford.EDU (Marc T. Kaufman) (11/03/88)

In article <180@umigw.MIAMI.EDU> angel@umigw (angel li) writes:
>I have a CDC Wren IV drive which I have initialized with SF&I.  It is bootable
>and I have been using it as a system disk.  I would now like to use it as
>an A/UX system disk but I don't know how to get A/UX loaded on it.  Has
>anyone done this?  Will I have to get a commercial device driver for this?

I don't think the SF&I driver uses the new format Partition Map.  This would
mean that you can use the disk for Mac OS -- or A/UX -- but not both.  You
can use the normal dp utility on A/UX to build the Partition Map and initialize
the disk.

>By the way, what is the exact size of a Wren IV?  I initialized it with
>a huge number of blocks since I don't plan to fill it up with native Mac OS
>software.

If you have SCSI Tool you can do a 'Read Capacity' (opcode 25) to get the
size of the disk in blocks.  [by the way, the result of the Read Capacity
command is the logical block address (block number) of the last block that
can be read on the disk -- not the size of the disk.  The last block number
is usually (size-1)].

Marc Kaufman (kaufman@polya.stanford.edu)

ephraim@think.COM (Ephraim Vishniac) (11/03/88)

In article <180@umigw.MIAMI.EDU> angel@umigw (angel li) writes:
>I have a CDC Wren IV drive which I have initialized with SF&I.  It is bootable
>and I have been using it as a system disk.  I would now like to use it as
>an A/UX system disk but I don't know how to get A/UX loaded on it.  Has
>anyone done this?  Will I have to get a commercial device driver for this?

Unfortunately, SF&I doesn't support the partitioning scheme used with
A/UX.  (It didn't exist yet when the program was written.)  From
reading comp.unix.aux, though, I have the impression that Apple's
generic A/UX driver should fill the bill.

Ephraim Vishniac					  ephraim@think.com
Thinking Machines Corporation / 245 First Street / Cambridge, MA 02142-1214

     On two occasions I have been asked, "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put
     into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?"

paul@taniwha.UUCP (Paul Campbell) (11/05/88)

In article <30249@think.UUCP> ephraim@vidar.think.com (Ephraim Vishniac) writes:
>In article <180@umigw.MIAMI.EDU> angel@umigw (angel li) writes:
>>I have a CDC Wren IV drive which I have initialized with SF&I.  It is bootable
>>and I have been using it as a system disk.  I would now like to use it as
>
>Unfortunately, SF&I doesn't support the partitioning scheme used with
>A/UX.  (It didn't exist yet when the program was written.)  From
>reading comp.unix.aux, though, I have the impression that Apple's
>generic A/UX driver should fill the bill.

I have an XP150 (Wren IV based), I just did a:

	dd if=/dev/rdsk/c0d0s31 of=/dev/rdsk/c1d0s31 bs=400k

(where the distribution disk has scsi ID 0 and the Wren has ID 1). This copies
over the partition map, Apple driver and the whole distribution. The Apple
driver works just fine. After you have done this you will want to use
the A/UX utility dp to enlarge the last partition in the partition map
to take up the whole of the rest of the disk (dp will tell you how big
the disk is). Next use pname to give the new partition a minor number
(ie attach it to /dev/rdsk/c?d0s?), next use mkfs to put a file system on it
(you should also use pname to make an /etc/ptab ...)


	Paul


-- 
Paul Campbell			..!{unisoft|mtxinu}!taniwha!paul (415)420-8179
Taniwha Systems Design, Oakland CA

 	"Where was George?" - Nudge nudge, say no more ...

sas1@tank.uchicago.edu (stuart austin schmukler) (11/07/88)

In article <213@taniwha.UUCP> paul@taniwha.UUCP (Paul Campbell) writes:
>
>	dd if=/dev/rdsk/c0d0s31 of=/dev/rdsk/c1d0s31 bs=400k
>

Which works fine if you do not want to use the MacOS partition of the
drive for writing.  As others have mentioned, the dd above blasts ALL
of the software on the target drive including the vendor's MacOS
driver.  Since the MacOS driver is needed to write on the disk reading
is the only safe thing to do.  

You can save yourself some grief by write protesting the MacOS
partition.  You can still boot A/UX, but you will get an error message
flashed on the screen during boot.  I have not seen any ill effects
from this error yet.

The best way of getting A/UX onto the drive is to get a MacOS driver
for the drive.  Then you carefully plan the layout of the disk,
partition, and copy the file systems one-by-one into the partitions.
(Luckly it does not seem you have to worry about the physical cylinder
and head layout as you must under SunOS systems.)

In short this process takes the knowledge of a UNIX literate -- not
your typical store clerk.  


If anyone has solution to this problem I'd love to hear about it.

SaS

PS: Thanks to Charlie Kim I got thru this mess. 

kaufman@polya.Stanford.EDU (Marc T. Kaufman) (11/08/88)

In article <676@tank.uchicago.edu> sas1@tank.uchicago.edu.UUCP (stuart austin schmukler) writes:

>The best way of getting A/UX onto the drive is to get a MacOS driver
>for the drive.  Then you carefully plan the layout of the disk,
>partition, and copy the file systems one-by-one into the partitions.

I disagree.  The MacOS driver is good for one thing only -- handling the MacOS
partition on the disk.  It is NOT capable of doing anything to the A/UX
partitions, including copying the files.  'dd' is fine for copying anything,
if you don't change file system sizes.  The big problem today is that few
Mac vendor disks have drivers or managers that can properly handle the new
format partition map.  Even Apple's HDSetup 2.0 has problems with partition
maps that it did not create.  (it likes to set flags that no one else uses, and
cannot handle maps with more than 9 partitions).

Marc Kaufman (kaufman@polya.stanford.edu)