mark@shorty.cs.wisc.edu (Mark Spankus) (07/14/90)
Greets!
After exhaustive testing, I have been unable to get the Syquest 44 MB removable
media drive to work reliably on either an A2000HD w/ 2091 or on the A3000. I am
now going to the net to find out if anyone has been able to get these buggers
working with a 2091 or A3000.
First the stats:
The drive is a Syquest SQ555 w/ ANSI 3.131 SCSI Interface, 1275 cylinders,
2 heads 256 bytes/sector
The 2091 controller is a REV 4.00 modified running in a A2000 rev 4.2 w/ 512K
chip 512K fast and DOS 1.3.2
The A3000 was a dealer demo model with the beta 5 DOS 2.0
It was also tested in another A2000HD with 1 Meg chip 2 Meg fast 6.? rev & 2091
The problem is that the system randomly comes up with "Read/Write Error"
which will go away with the retry gadget. Occasionally the system will just
lock up when accessing the drive. The cartridges have been formated and
partitioned on the 2091 using the HD software. The intenal hard drive works
fine. The drive can usually be formatted correctly, although it sometimes
hangs during the proceedure. Both read & write operations fail, randomly,
but frequently. Both the 2000HD and 3000 (2.0 & 1.3) have the same problems.
The drive works flawlessly on the 2090A in a 2000 w/ rev 4.2 board and
another w/ a 6.? board. It has also worked great on an A500 w/ GVP scsi
drive/controller and on an old Supra controller on an A1000.
I am told that it also worked on an old 2090 controller.
I have tried changing the reslection option in the 2091 setup software,
changing the read mask, unterminating the external drive, changing the number
of partitions & SCSI ID, reading the default parameters from the drive as far as
number of cylinders & heads (which interestingly enough is read as 2550
cylinders 1 head) etc. I have tried to read cartridges which have been formatted
with working controllers using the info from working mountlists. The 2091 can
mount & read these cartridges just fine, but it still has random read/write
errors. It has been tested on two working 2091's in two A2000's and on one
A3000 which all fail the same way. Two Syquest drives have been tested.
I have now exhausted all the possibilities that I can think of. The owner of
the drive is preparing to sell it because he can not use it on his new 3000
or on his 2000 which now has a 2091 instead of the 2090A. I have heard rumors
the the drive "just isn't supported", which I can accept, I'd just like to
know what the incompatibilities are. If anyone at CBM would like to play
with it for a while, I'm sure that could be arranged.
So that's the story. Anyone have and suggestions? Has anyone got this drive
to work with a 2091 or on a A3000? ANY help or ideas would be greatly
appreciated. Thanks in advance.
-Mark
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Mark Spankus University of Wisconsin - Madison
path: ...!{allegra,heurikon,ihnp4,seismo,ucbvax,uwm-evax}!uwvax!mark
arpa: mark@shorty.cs.wisc.edu
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