Controller/driver combo... will it work?

[Karl Denninger]

In article <490 at obdient.UUCP> blair at obdient.UUCP (Doug Blair) writes:
>> Thirdly, will this next release fix the ungodly partitioning scheme your
>> system V/386 uses, so I can have peaceful coexistance with other operating
>> systems and partitions without pulling my hair out?
>> 
>[FLAME ON, low burn only :-)]
>Karl, I know you've had some problems with the '286 uport.  Let the
>company recover from their mistake - I'm sure they intend to.  If you
>want to know if they'll support other operating systems and other
>partitions, just ask.  I have precious little hair and don't like the
>thought on anyone losing theirs.
>[FLAME OFF]

Yep; I have their '386 version as well, and went through a 16 hour fight
to get a second disk installed with both DOS and Unix partitions.  It *can*
be done, but the work involved is rediculous (or requires tearing apart
their installation and redoing it).   When I tried installing on a
Telenix-386 the installation failed with a hard disk prepped at 1:1 interleave
(bad tracking did not work correctly; the system tried to write to defective
sectors!).  Reformatting w/Microports formatter gives me a working system
with 50% of it's potential disk performance (the "reformat" option formats
at 1:2 interleave on the Televideo... argh!)

All I'd like is to be able to create partitions in a way which is (1)
compatible or at least reasonable w/respect to DOS and other OSs, and (2)
have the system do what I ask.  This means formatting at 1:1 if I ask for
it, and doing the bad tracking properly *without* having to hand-edit the
parameter files.  Seems reasonable to me.

>> And can we have the 'sar' disk activity code put back in please, so 'sar'
>> can report on disk I/O activity (on the '286, the '386 I haven't checked)?
>> 
>Like the spagetti sauce, "it's in there" on the 386 version.

Great!  (As I said, haven't checked the 'sar' on the '386... although James
Van Artsdalen says its missing on the '386 version... so we have conflicting
reports!)

Please understand that we have worked with the SV/386 product to some
extent.  We simply don't have the time to fight problems like we encountered
with installation.  I can rip a drive out of our Xenix/386 system and be back 
in operation in under an hour.  The last time I tried this on Uport/386 it 
took a *lot* longer -- like 4-6 hours.  We gave up on splitting the second 
drive for both DOS and Unix after several aborted attempts.

SV/386 is FAR better than the '286 product in terms of reliability (I've
seen only one panic so far) but many installation and disaster-recovery issues 
remain unaddressed.  When you do heavy development on a system (as we do) you 
WILL have disasters, and you need to be able to reconfigure and even (in
some cases) reinstall easily.  Currently I cannot do this with SV/386.

(Remember, SV/286 could even *boot* dos from the 'Unix' boot prompt)

----
Karl Denninger                 |  Data: +1 312 566-8912
Macro Computer Solutions, Inc. | Voice: +1 312 566-8910
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