Misc uport bugs and observations

[Steven C. Neighorn]

In article <1446 at bigtex.uucp> james at bigtex.UUCP (James Van Artsdalen) writes:
>Bet you were bit by the dual-drive-failure bug.  To my experience, that bug
>is still with us on the 386: it just doesn't print the error message any more.
>I had trouble with the WD1003 and WD1006: don't have a second drive to test
>the WD1007 with.

I set up a system running dual Toshiba MK56-B drives with an Everex HD
controller (WD compatible) on an Intel 386 motherboard with V/386. This
system has encountered no HD errors in about 8 months of uptime. I might add
that this system supports 16 terminals using two 8-port Digiboards. Normally
there are between 8-10 users on the system during the workday. I am a bit
worried by the reports of dual-HD problems on V/386, even though I have
not encountered any of them yet. Am I lucky? Am I unixing on thin ice?
Just what is going on here?

>I had this problem too.  Pretty much prevents you from using any drive that
>does not have the manufacturer's bad sector list.  I did not determine whether
>the fault was with the WD1006 or uPort's hd driver (but guess which I suspect).
>The problems went away once I corrected the bad sector table for 1:1 interleave
>(see last paragraph below: INSTALL makes dumb assumptions).

I have had good luck using 3rd (4th?) party hard disk analyzers to find bad
sectors, and then using this information for Microport's bad sector input
table. Manufacturer's tests appear much more demanding than anything user
disk analyzers find. Once in a great while though, these user programs *do*
find legitimate errors the manufacturer's tests do not find.
-- 
Steven C. Neighorn    ...!tektronix!{psu-cs,reed,ogcvax}!qiclab!catlabs!neighorn
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