campbell@redsox.bsw.com (Larry Campbell) (10/22/89)
I'm stumped and am looking for hints. I'm trying to add a 2nd ESDI drive to my Dell 310 running 386/ix (2.0.2). The first drive is a vanilla CDC drive (150MB, don't know the exact model number) which has been running fine for a year. The second drive is an Imprimis 173MB drive. It's a 3 1/2" drive (cute little thing!) with 1072 cylinders, 9 surfaces, and 36 sectors per track. My controller (unfortunately, it seems) is a WD1007A. I don't have the OEM manuals for any of this stuff (next time I buy a system I'm *demanding* they be included!) but I'm told the WD1007A can only handle 34 sectors/track. There's a jumper on the Imprimis drive that Imprimis claims makes it look like it has 34 sectors/track. I formatted the drive using the controller's BIOS. It gave me three choices for drive geometry, none of which exactly matched the actual geometry, so I picked the one with the least wasted space (325 cylinders, 16 surfaces, 63 sectors/track). I suppose this is the standard sort of stupidity IBM foisted on the world with their AT "architecture". Anyway, I ran through "sysadm addharddisk" and everything seemed to go OK. Surface analysis finds a believable number of bad sectors and remaps them, fdisk works, mkpart and mkfs work, and without any intimidating error messages, I get all the way through. I can even fsck the new file systems. So far, so good. Now I mount the file systems I created. They work OK for a while, but sooner or later (very soon if I do lots of I/O to the second drive) the system hangs, apparently in the disk driver. Characters still echo but no processes run. The second drive select light is on solid. There are no error messages on the console. I have to hit the Big Red Switch. Has anyone else ever run into this problem? Do I need a new disk controller? A new UNIX vendor? Better magic words? Pixie dust? Help!! -- Larry Campbell The Boston Software Works, Inc. campbell@bsw.com 120 Fulton Street wjh12!redsox!campbell Boston, MA 02146
root@mustang.dell.com (0000-Admin(0000)) (10/24/89)
You mentioned that the drive select light stays on with the second hard drive when it fails. This sounds very similar to the multisector write problem that ISC had with ESDI Drives on the 1007A before. It sounds like the bug is fixed for drive 0, but not for drive 1. James R. Howard Dell Computer Corporation P#: (512) 343-3480 9505 Arboretum Blvd. !s: cs.utexas.edu!dell!mustang!jrh Austin, Texas 78759
akcs.larry@nstar.UUCP (Larry Snyder) (10/24/89)
>James R. Howard >Dell Computer Corporation P#: (512) 343-3480 >9505 Arboretum Blvd. !s: cs.utexas.edu!dell!mustang!jrh Who's Unix is Dell re-selling?
jlg@odicon.UUCP (John L. Grzesiak) (10/24/89)
In article <1470@redsox.bsw.com>, campbell@redsox.bsw.com (Larry Campbell) writes: > I'm trying to add a 2nd ESDI drive to my Dell 310 running 386/ix (2.0.2). > My controller (unfortunately, it seems) is a WD1007A. I don't have the > -- Not so on the 34 spt only. What you should do is add jumper W8 to the 1007a. This will put the controller into a WD1005 compatible mode. (Except , contrary to what most WD people will tell you, it WILL handle a 1:1 interleave). The WD1005 compat mode handles 36spt just fine and will increase track buffering performance as well as slightly increase your drive space. Three hints : 1) Don't use the Interactive formatter as this is just for ST506 drives 2) Get the WD formatter to show the correct spt. 3) Don't answer yes to the alternate sectors question. *-----------------------------------------------------------------* * John Grzesiak : Specializing in UNIX/XENIX * * @ Omega Dynamics : Consulting . . . . * * Wallingford Ct USA : * * jlg@odicon or spock!odicon!jlg : gaboon!odicon!jlg * *-----------------------------------------------------------------*
aland@infmx.UUCP (Dr. Scump) (10/25/89)
In article <1470@redsox.bsw.com> campbell@redsox.bsw.com (Larry Campbell) writes: >... >My controller (unfortunately, it seems) is a WD1007A. I don't have the >OEM manuals for any of this stuff (next time I buy a system I'm *demanding* >they be included!) but I'm told the WD1007A can only handle 34 sectors/track. >... >Larry Campbell The Boston Software Works, Inc. Western Digital's Tech Support will send you free of charge the manual/spec sheet for any of their controllers (at least, they have every time I asked; they're friendly folks). The last number that I have for them is (800) 777-4787 (worked about 2 months ago). -- Alan S. Denney @ Informix Software, Inc. {pyramid|uunet}!infmx!aland "I want to live! -------------------------------------------- as an honest man, Disclaimer: These opinions are mine alone. to get all I deserve If I am caught or killed, the secretary and to give all I can." will disavow any knowledge of my actions. - S. Vega