rca@brunix.cs.brown.edu (Ronald C.F. Antony) (03/06/90)
To all desperate users of CDC-Imprimis-Seagate Wren VI drives: We proudly present the work of a few sleepless nights; finnaly there is a integrated, userfriendly utility with NeXTStep interface which makes it easy to get out the most of the dirve you have: -Caching -automatic error reallocation -user selectable sector sizes between 256 and 4096 bytes/sector -free choice of bad sector reallocation scheme The Program presents the user with default choices which seem to make sense to us. But you can cange them if you want. This makes it easy to use Harddisks not directly supported by NeXT. The Wren VI harddrives meet all specs for harddisks usable within a NeXT computer. (e.g. heat, voltage requirements etc). They will however not (yet?) be supported by NeXT, inc. All you need to do to install one of these nice drives: -remove your internal drive (also the swap drive) -set the scsi target address of the Wren dirve to 1 -put it into the NeXT -boot from an optical with the right disktab and our Wren VI formatting program on it -call the Wren VI formatter -set the parameters according to your choice or leave the defaults -click the format button -wait 30 minutes (until format is done) -use buiddisk to install the system on the WrenVI -shut the NeXT down -reboot All in all this should take about 2-3 hours (including the format process and building the disk. Now my drive has 1MB/sec. sustained throughput (as measured with the NeXT disk program) and has 668*1024^2 Bytes on it (some ppl would say that is 701MB, including CDC, but I think thats 668MB...) For all those of you having Wren IV and Wren V dirves, your chances are good that the program works as well. The specs of these dirves look pretty much the same, but unless someone donnates us a few of these drives we have no chance to test the program. For more info send mail to either of us: Ronald and Axel ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Axel Merk "One needs a certain amount of blindness -- -- agm@cs.brown.edu to see perfection" - Christopher Nuzum -- -- (401) 272 2262 -- Brown University -- Box 53 -- Providence -- RI 02912 -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ronald C.F. Antony -- Brown University -- P.O.Box 234 -- (401) 863 4877 "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." Bernhard Shaw | rca@cs.brown.edu or antony@browncog.bitnet ------------------------------------------------------------------------------