anderson@csli.Stanford.EDU (Steve Anderson) (07/05/90)
I have a 600 (actually 573 or so) Mbyte CDC Wren V (94181-15?) drive that I bought to use (eventually) with A/UX. I've been using it for a couple of months as a plain MacOS drive with no problems. Now that I have my copy of A/UX 2.0, I'd like to get it ready for its intended use. When I tried to reformat it with Apples' HDSC-setup, I was unable to get the drive initialized. I was using a copy of the version (2.01) that comes on the 6.0.5 disks supplied with A/UX, modified with ResEdit per several recent messages on the net (i.e., with the byte preceding each of the supported disk types changes to 0x00). HDSC-setup finds the disk when it scans the bus, and reports that it is "uninitialized or its partition map has become invalid." When I then click to initialize it, it reports that it is formatting the drive, and runs for about 5-8 minutes (less than half the time other software takes to format the same drive). It then puts up a dialog box saying that "The drive could not be initialized. Unable to Initialize the disk." Clicking on Continue gets me another dialog box: "Drive selection failed. Unable to read required information from disk." Upon return to the main menu, the machine is hung, unable to quit, and the drive select light on the Wren stays on until I reboot. When I choose Test at the initial menu instead of Initialize, it runs a test which takes about 12-15 minutes, and then returns with the report that the test was successfully completed. I can still format the disk as a mac disk with other software (APS Powertools, Jasmine Driveware, Tullin Format, or - I imagine, if they ever ship it - the copy of MacTools Deluxe that I ordered back in February. But I gather I need to use Apple's HDSC-setup in order to get it partitioned for A/UX - unless, that is, I want to buy yet another disk utility program, LaCie's Silver Lining. Can anyone suggest something I can do to get HDSC-setup to initialize and partition this drive (I might mention that the same copy of HDSC-setup worked fine to reinitialize and format the internal 80 Mbyte Quantum in my IIci)? And if not, is there anyone willing to lend me a copy of Silver Lining just long enough to get this one disk set up? I'm in Baltimore, so if someone at JHU or UMCP could lend me a disk that would be nice - or if I were to receive a binhexed copy in the mail I promise I'll destroy it after using it just this once.... A general remark about the A/UX 2.0 documentation: Although it does seem in places to be aimed at an awfully low level of user (see the detailed information about how to open files by clicking on icons, etc., repeated many times in many places), it seems to be useful and informative even for those for a fair amount of general UNIX experience. But as far as hardware is concerned, it provides absolutely no information at all about how to use anything Apple doesn't sell. Just "If you bought a third party widget, see the documentation from the manufacturer." Of course, the third party manufacturer knew little if anything about A/UX 2.0, and has no relevant documentation. I'm not asking Apple to support other people's products per se, but I'm sure they know a few things about how to install them, and a few hints in the documentation could be very useful. Steve Anderson Cognitive Science Center The Johns Hopkins University anderson@sapir.cog.jhu.edu anderson@cs.jhu.edu anderson@csli.stanford.edu