[comp.sys.3b1] "panic: iinit" says Floppy Boot Disk

dnichols@ceilidh.beartrack.com (DoN Nichols) (03/05/91)

In article <37061@fmsrl7.UUCP> pms415!reso@fmsrl7.srl.ford.com (Dennis M. Reso) writes:
>[AT&T Unix PC, 2MBx58MB (Micropolis), 3.51 kernel]
>
>While fumbling with a phone connection on the back of my
>unixpc I inadvertently hit that pesky reset button (nice
>ergonomics, there, eh?) Unfortunately, this stopped the

	Some machines have a metal tab bent up beside the button, so that it
is a major effort to hit it, even intentionally.

>machine dead and it didn't boot. Pressed and held it before
>releasing and nothing. Power cycled it and nothing. The

	[ ... ]

>The Diagnostic Disk says "drive not formatted" when parking
>the heads; Hard Disk Boot floppy gives the same panic message.

	I'm afraid that the system was updating the superblock when you hit
the button, and that stopped the read/write logic cold.  The result is that
the entire track is wiped of data.  If so, the mimimum you will have to do
is reformat it.  (It would be nice to have a diagnostic-level command to
re-format a single track, and to have alternate superblocks around the
system, like the BSD ffs has.)

	I hope I'm wrong, and that someone else can post hints which will
put you back in operation painlessly, but I fear otherwise.

	You might even hit the problem I had with one disk.  I couldn't
format it, because it failed recal.  It failed recal because the heads
couldn't verify they had reached track 0 after a seek till the track00 line
came true.  No recal -> no format.  No format -> no recal.  Catch-22!  I may
have to bring back to life one of my old 6809 systems, to force a re-format
of track 00.

>Any help would be greatly appreciated, even if it is
>definitive bad news, I guess.

	Sorry I can't give more hope.
	I wish you luck.
		DoN.


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