info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA (10/03/84)
From: Provan@LLL-MFE.ARPA ...the continuing saga. Since our RA81 is under warranty still, we asked them to come out and reformat our RA81 with a more up-to-date disk formatter. The field service dude told us he wasn't allowed to do that because the disk would lose the factory blocks or maintanence cylinders or something (I got this second hand, so I'm not sure what exactly he was talking about). He agreed to bring out another RA81 to replace ours while he shipped it back for formatting, but is there anything in what he's saying? After all the adise I got on how to reformat, I wasn't expecting ANY problem, so this really suprized me.
info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA (10/03/84)
From: Richard Johnson <raj@uci-750a> This sounds interesting. Our DEC CE formatted our RA81 with a DEC formatter using our machine after installation here. He even left us a copy of the RA81 formatter and diagnostics tape.
info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA (10/03/84)
From: John Haskey <haskey@uci-icsb> We have two VAXen running VMS with 2 RA81's apiece. I have reformatted two of the disks myself with no problems or complaints from DEC. If your interested, I can tell you all the gory details. sounds like DEC service was giving you a line.