brad@microm.UUCP (Bradley W. Fisher) (08/03/90)
Ok, I give up. I really do *want* to believe that Interacive's UNIX is a
viable solution for an operating system ... but here I am getting bit again :-(
The facts:
16 mhz Intel 301 386 motherboard
8 meg of ram
Phoenix BIOS ver 3.03
Wangtek 5099EK
currently running 2 85meg MFM hard disks OK.
ISC 2.0.2
The problem:
Cannot get ISC to load onto new Maxtor 4380E hard disk with
Adaptec 2322B controller.
The procedures and symptoms:
Boot MSDOS, run debug g=c800:5 to use controller's BIOS for low
level format routine. Ran 48 hour surface scan with Speed Stor,
no problem, no new bad sectors discovered.
Boot ISC, sees drive as 1224 x 15 x 36, ISC says you can't use
more than 1024 cylinders, so I tell it there are only 1024. Run
fdisk, use 100% for UNIX, start cylinder 1, end cylinder 1021.
Activate UNIX partition. Set up file systems, 60 cyl for swap
(16 meg), 75 cyl for root (20 meg), 443 for usr (122 meg), 442
for usr2 (122 meg). ISC creates root filesystem OK, labels it,
and makes lost+found. Creates usr filesystem OK labels it, BUT
the following error is displayed ...
NOTICE: free block read error on Primary AT Hard Disk DISK unit 0, partition 3
mount failed
mount of usr failed
... and lost+found is not created. Then ISC merrily goes on trying to
install files on the hard disk (great error checking in that script!).
Never does try to create usr2.
Other goodies:
The same system installs SCO XENIX fine. Installing with a 170 meg
Micropolis 1355 (1024 x 8 x 35) works just fine too. All filesystems
are created properly.
I've tried everything I know of to make this work (like disabling the
BIOS on the Adaptec,knocking down the number of cylinders a little more) and keep getting the same results.
I'm not trying to do ISC bashing here, but no we don't want to spend several
hundred dollars to *maybe* get an answer from ISC to *solve* this problem. If
no one on the net has a clue as to what is happening here, we'll have to solve
this the way we've solved other problems ISC couldn't give us a good answer on
in the past ... switch over to SCO XENIX. A least our money will be going
towards a product I know will install and run on this configuartion the *first*
time. I would like to see this work though ... really ;-)
--
I'm just a wanna be UNIX guru (IJWBUG) | Micro Maintenance, Inc.
| 2465 W. 12th St. #6
-== Brad Fisher ==- | Tempe, Arizona 85281
...!asuvax!mcdphx!hrc!microm!brad | 602/894-5526
wtm@uhura.neoucom.EDU (Bill Mayhew) (08/03/90)
ISC seems to be a fairly close relative of AT&T 3.2. I found that AT&T Unix seems to have a strong prejudice against any non-Western Digital brand HD controllers. Unix does not use the BIOS code on the controller due to the fact that controller BIOSes don't support reentrancy (as a rule of thumb). For AT&T (and perhaps ISC if they inhereted the driver code from AT&T), this means that absolute 100% register level compatibility is required on the HD interface card. My system at home is a JDR 386-33 MHz cache board. I am using a Priam 330 megabyte drive with 1220 cylinders and a WD-1007V-SE2 floppy/hard ESDI controller. I strapped the board to provide sector translation to 63 sectors per track. The sector translation is transparent to the O/S, so Unix gets to see the entire drive minus the 30 meg DOS partition that I set aside. The only problem I had is that Unix was not happy unless I allocated the DOS partition starting at cylinder 0. I'd rather have the DOS partition in the high numbered cylinders in case a DOS program bombs out and tries to write past the end of the partition. Oh well... The WD-1007V-SE2 may not be the fastest controller in existance, but it isn't a slouch by any means either. ==Bill== -- Bill Mayhew Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine Rootstown, OH 44272-9995 USA phone: 216-325-2511 wtm@uhura.neoucom.edu ....!uunet!aablue!neoucom!wtm via internet: (140.220.001.001)
marz@cbnewsm.att.com (martin.zam) (08/03/90)
Article: 9512 of comp.unix.i386 From: brad@microm.UUCP (Bradley W. Fisher) Newsgroups: comp.unix.i386 Subject: ISC won't install on 330meg ESDI Keywords: ISC ESDI woes > > > The facts: > 16 mhz Intel 301 386 motherboard > 8 meg of ram > Phoenix BIOS ver 3.03 > Wangtek 5099EK > currently running 2 85meg MFM hard disks OK. > ISC 2.0.2 > > The problem: > Cannot get ISC to load onto new Maxtor 4380E hard disk with > Adaptec 2322B controller. > > The procedures and symptoms: > Boot MSDOS, run debug g=c800:5 to use controller's BIOS for low > level format routine. Ran 48 hour surface scan with Speed Stor, > no problem, no new bad sectors discovered. Brad, This whole problem exists because ISC has a bug in their low-level format program. It cannot successfully format ESDI drives! This is, of course, an undocumented "feature" of ISC. There are other "features" in ISC. I have solved some other problems, but the answer you need follows: You need to Boot MSDOS, run debug g=c800:5 and using the controller's BIOS routines "Turn on 63 Sector translation". This is one of the options in a submenu. This fakes the system into seeing more (logical) sectors per track so that the number of cylinders is (logically) less than 1024. This step is usually done right after the low-level format, so if you've done anything that affects the low-level format, it may have to be re-run. This is how i got my M9380 drive to work with ISC. Also, if you get messages about "Too many bad blocks" from ISC, I know how to fix this so it will still install. Post or Email if you see this one. It's a LU-LU. Hope this helps. > Boot ISC, sees drive as 1224 x 15 x 36, ISC says you can't use > more than 1024 cylinders, so I tell it there are only 1024. Run > fdisk, use 100% for UNIX, start cylinder 1, end cylinder 1021. > Activate UNIX partition. Set up file systems, 60 cyl for swap > (16 meg), 75 cyl for root (20 meg), 443 for usr (122 meg), 442 > for usr2 (122 meg). ISC creates root filesystem OK, labels it, > and makes lost+found. Creates usr filesystem OK labels it, BUT > the following error is displayed ... > > NOTICE: free block read error on Primary AT Hard Disk DISK unit 0, partition 3 > > mount failed > mount of usr failed > > ... and lost+found is not created. Then ISC merrily goes on trying to > install files on the hard disk (great error checking in that script!). > Never does try to create usr2. > > Other goodies: > The same system installs SCO XENIX fine. Installing with a 170 meg > Micropolis 1355 (1024 x 8 x 35) works just fine too. All filesystems > are created properly. > I've tried everything I know of to make this work (like disabling the > BIOS on the Adaptec,knocking down the number of cylinders a little more) and keep getting the same results. > > I'm not trying to do ISC bashing here, but no we don't want to spend several > hundred dollars to *maybe* get an answer from ISC to *solve* this problem. If > no one on the net has a clue as to what is happening here, we'll have to solve > this the way we've solved other problems ISC couldn't give us a good answer on ISC didn't have a clue. Adaptec didn't have a clue(I have the same controller). I will also warn you to turn off the read-ahead cache on this controller card. I have heard that this can cause UNIX systems to get flakey. > in the past ... switch over to SCO XENIX. A least our money will be going > towards a product I know will install and run on this configuartion the *first* > time. I would like to see this work though ... really ;-) > > -- > I'm just a wanna be UNIX guru (IJWBUG) | Micro Maintenance, Inc. > | 2465 W. 12th St. #6 > -== Brad Fisher ==- | Tempe, Arizona 85281 > ...!asuvax!mcdphx!hrc!microm!brad | 602/894-5526 > > Martin Zam (201)564-2554