woods@robohack.UUCP (Greg A. Woods) (05/04/90)
In article <1990May2.142538.4822@nebulus.UUCP> dennis@nebulus.UUCP (Dennis S. Breckenridge) writes: > paul@voicebox.dialogic.com (The Imaginative Moron aka Joey Pheromone) writes: > >However, I have heard that some early /300's (with flat pack processor > >chips,which mine has) had problems addressing large disks, because of > >a disk controller bug. My informant was vague about the numbers, but > >he said 30mb would work, but > 50 mb wouldn't. > > Once you have the mod in, then the 3B2/300 will support 2 * 72 megs. > I have not tried anything like (boo hiss yuck :-) *Maxtor* drives but > I am sure that woods@robohack could expand on what is required there. Yup, Maxtor's work fine! Well at least one of mine does... (If anyone has any Maxtor carcasses, I'm interested.) > The standard drive is the CDC WREN-II, but you can drop in pretty > much any drive that meets the CDC spec (Hitachi, Micropolis, Fujistsu) > You also mentioned devtools. The new and improved version of this > is called idtools. You may want to track a copy of it down. Yes, idtools lets you do almost anything with a disk, as long as you know the drive geometry. The only restrictions seem to be 15 head, 1024 cylinders. You can even change the number of sectors per track, though 18 is the optimal number for standard ST-506 systems. I've not tried 1024 byte sectors, though it even appears you can change the sector size too. Idtools does the low level format, verify, bad-block table entry and editing, disk copying, sanity track writing, etc. I currently have 2 Maxtor-1140's installed, as 15h x 1024c x 18s x 512b. (Most 1140's will format out to 1024 cylinders, though they are only supposed to go to 918. Some only go to 900.) -- Greg A. Woods woods@{robohack,gate,eci386,tmsoft,ontmoh}.UUCP +1 416 443-1734 [h] +1 416 595-5425 [w] VE3-TCP Toronto, Ontario; CANADA
dennis@nebulus.UUCP (Dennis S. Breckenridge) (05/04/90)
woods@robohack.UUCP (Greg A. Woods) writes: >I currently have 2 Maxtor-1140's installed, as 15h x 1024c x 18s x 512b. >(Most 1140's will format out to 1024 cylinders, though they are only >supposed to go to 918. Some only go to 900.) What the question to Greg is: How many times has robohack been down on a Maxtor disk fault? I ping his machine (via uucp) just to get a laugh every now and then. :-) -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dennis S. Breckenridge (604) 277-7413 dennis@nebulus.uucp VE7TCP Still brain dead after all these years :-) -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
mdapoz@hybrid.UUCP (Mark Dapoz) (05/06/90)
In article <1990May4.154009.10562@nebulus.UUCP> dennis@nebulus.UUCP (Dennis S. Breckenridge) writes: >>I currently have 2 Maxtor-1140's installed, as 15h x 1024c x 18s x 512b. >>(Most 1140's will format out to 1024 cylinders, though they are only >>supposed to go to 918. Some only go to 900.) > >What the question to Greg is: How many times has robohack been down >on a Maxtor disk fault? I ping his machine (via uucp) just to get >a laugh every now and then. :-) I have two 1140's on my 3B1 and I've formatted them to 1024 cylinders and they've been running fine for over 4 months now. One of them (the spool drive) usually sees about 10 meg per day of activity (some of it the backlog to robohack :-). -- Managing a software development team | Mark Dapoz is a lot like being on the psychiatric | mdapoz%hybrid@cs.toronto.edu ward. -Mitch Kapor, San Jose Mercury | ...uunet!mnetor!hybrid!mdapoz
lindh@uhasun.hartford.edu (Andrew Lindh) (05/06/90)
Where can I get "idtools"?? I have a dead 3B2 disk....I want to put in a normal ST-506 but I can't low level format it in a 3B2/300/310 Also....is there an upgrade from a 3B2/300 to a 310? -- Andrew Lindh, a student at the University of Hartford -- Computer Science BITNET: LINDH@HARTFORD.bitnet INTERNET: lindh@uhasun.uofh.edu UUCP/Usenet: lindh@evecs.uucp ---- When will I grduate??? NOTE: All views here are MINE!!! Not the schools or thoes of anyone else!
woods@eci386.uucp (Greg A. Woods) (05/07/90)
In article <1990May4.154009.10562@nebulus.UUCP> dennis@nebulus.UUCP (Dennis S. Breckenridge) writes: > woods@robohack.UUCP (Greg A. Woods) writes: > > I currently have 2 Maxtor-1140's installed, as 15h x 1024c x 18s x 512b. > > (Most 1140's will format out to 1024 cylinders, though they are only > > supposed to go to 918. Some only go to 900.) > > What the question to Greg is: How many times has robohack been down > on a Maxtor disk fault? I ping his machine (via uucp) just to get > a laugh every now and then. :-) The answer is: many.... though the failing drive isn't a Maxtor original, but rather a fabrication by Nortek which looks a lot like a Maxtor. :-( I think its heads are magnetized, though that should be impossible, since they should be ceramic. I formatted it on Sat., and ran "dgn sbd ph=20-21 soak" all night. It completed ATP with 435 complete passes. After restoring, it handled a few megabytes of news, then rather quickly went catatonic, with event the bad block map becoming inaccessible. Also, to the rest of you 3B2 users: DON'T change the sector size. The firmware only knows about 512b sectors. This wouldn't be a problem if the firmware only loaded the first sector of track 0, but it seems the sanity track seems to be elsewhere, and the disk sanity check fails instantly. Now, this may still be possible, but I don't know enough about the undocumented drive type id's, and such, nor have I looked to see exactly what is stored in sector 0, track 0. If you are using a Maxtor, or some other large drive with similar geometry, you can use drive type id 11. Filledt and/or prtconf know this drive type as a "135 Megabyte Drive". -- Greg A. Woods woods@{eci386,gate,robohack,ontmoh,tmsoft}.UUCP +1-416-443-1734 [h] +1-416-595-5425 [w] VE3-TCP Toronto, Ontario CANADA
dennis@nebulus.UUCP (Dennis S. Breckenridge) (05/08/90)
woods@eci386.uucp (Greg A. Woods) writes: >If you are using a Maxtor, or some other large drive with similar >geometry, you can use drive type id 11. Filledt and/or prtconf know >this drive type as a "135 Megabyte Drive". What about adding a MAXTOR entry in the equipped device table. I used to remember the command syntax, but a man page on /etc/edttbl used to show you how. I thought it was something like: /etc/edttbl -l /dgn/edt_data -blah blah. This is where all the prtconf info comes from. DGN should find it as well unless EhTNT buried the drive test configs into the binaries! -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dennis S. Breckenridge (604) 277-7413 dennis@nebulus.uucp VE7TCP Still brain dead after all these years :-) -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
friedl@mtndew.UUCP (Steve Friedl) (05/09/90)
Greg Woods writes: > Also, to the rest of you 3B2 users: DON'T change the sector size. > The firmware only knows about 512b sectors. This wouldn't be a > problem if the firmware only loaded the first sector of track 0, but > it seems the sanity track seems to be elsewhere, and the disk sanity > check fails instantly. Now, this may still be possible, but I don't > know enough about the undocumented drive type id's, and such, nor have > I looked to see exactly what is stored in sector 0, track 0. First, there are no "undocumented drive types". These are just numbers, and you can get the meaning of all of them by doing an edittbl command (with args that I don't recall at the moment). None of them are magic. Now for more info about sector 0 track 0. When you format a drive, the first two cylinders are taken away from you and used for lots of stuff: bad block tables, error logs, plus the physical description sector. The pdsector is (0,0), and it contains the drive's geometry. These are normally hidden from your view -- you can't get at them via normal reads and writes -- but special ioctls will let you get at them without too much trouble. Somewhere I have a program that prints out everything found in the early part of the drive, and I'll post it if I get enough requests. Steve -- Stephen J. Friedl, KA8CMY / Software Consultant / Tustin, CA / 3B2-kind-of-guy +1 714 544 6561 voice / friedl@vsi.com / {uunet,attmail}!mtndew!friedl "AT&T computers - we're not THAT bad" - Bob Kavner
woods@eci386.uucp (Greg A. Woods) (05/09/90)
In article <1990May8.151908.884@nebulus.UUCP> dennis@nebulus.UUCP (Dennis S. Breckenridge) writes: > woods@eci386.uucp (Greg A. Woods) writes: > > >If you are using a Maxtor, or some other large drive with similar > >geometry, you can use drive type id 11. Filledt and/or prtconf know > >this drive type as a "135 Megabyte Drive". > > What about adding a MAXTOR entry in the equipped device table. I used > to remember the command syntax, but a man page on /etc/edttbl used to > show you how. I thought it was something like: > /etc/edttbl -l /dgn/edt_data -blah blah. This is where all the prtconf > info comes from. DGN should find it as well unless EhTNT buried the > drive test configs into the binaries! Yup, you could do that, but the problem is finding out what the existing id codes are for. /etc/edttbl will print out the default known subdevice id's, but it doesn't look in the existing table. Filledt seems to be happy with type 11, and the entry on the boot menu says "HD135-B" or something similar. I guess disassembling filledt might reveal a table of all id's including the undocumented ones. It seems prtconf is able to see the number after the "HD" in the description field in /dgn/edt_data (which is what the boot programme displays), and prints that out as the size in megabytes. One other thing I should add is that I think I'm running with the new filledt which comes on the Core Upgrage Disk for 3.1 required for newer hardware such as the EPORTS and SCSI cards, though the filledt on the IDTOOLS disk also seems to know about type 11 drives. It's really sad that AT&T didn't see fit to publish all of this data in the service manual. I wonder where the "real" documentation is! I can understand not supporting third party drives (i.e. supporting only the 36Mb and 72Mb CDC Wren drives), but not documenting the system support software leaves even the service reps. out in the cold. The sevice manual I've seen doesn't even have the complete list of supported drive types! -- Greg A. Woods woods@{eci386,gate,robohack,ontmoh,tmsoft}.UUCP +1-416-443-1734 [h] +1-416-595-5425 [w] VE3-TCP Toronto, Ontario CANADA