phantom disk errors with 2 drives (was Re: Microport '386 Unix)

[Karl Lehenbauer]

In article <689 at nuchat.UUCP>, steve at nuchat.UUCP (Steve Nuchia) writes:
> From article <4280 at b-tech.UUCP>, by zeeff at b-tech.UUCP (Jon Zeeff):
> > ...There do seem to be a
> > large number of non repeatable disk errors.  Does anyone else get frequent
> > disk errors? 
> I've been getting them since day one, december 86.   ...

I run two Miniscribe 72 meg drives on an 8 MHz and have never had a
problem - since I changed disk controllers.

...don't know if this is your problem, but it's something to check.
When I went from a Seagate 40 meg (full height) to the first Miniscribe,
I could not get Unix to run or install.  It had worked OK on the 40,
but it had been really hard to get the install to work; I got "wn i/o
errors", but they finally cleared up.  Anyway, with the Miniscribe,
I got "can't find active partition end record" errors and wn i/o's when
trying to write them.  The Miniscribe worked fine from DOS, of course.

Anyway, after a week of this (to wax anecdotal), I was ready to give up,
sell the machine, and wait for a better path to personal Unix.
Finally, I decided that it had to be the controller.  My clone salesman
buddy said that couldn't possibly be it, but kindly lent me a new
controller anyway.  It worked like a champ.  

The funky controller that worked fine for DOS but not for Unix was made 
by National Computers Ltd. (NCL).  It is a nice looking board with a 
few custom chips (NCL) and not much else.  The board I replaced it with,
by chance, had a Western Digital controller chip (the NCL didn't) and 
was made by a different (but still clone) vendor.

Steve, since you mentioned you'd been on the phone with WD, I assume 
you've already tried a different controller.  Have you tried a different 
vendor's controller as well?  I seem to recall that you have a clone - a
Taiwan Inc. controller board would presumably be more likely to be
flakey or just enough off spec to make it work under cozy standard-
testbed DOS and not exotic Unix.  It's a shot, anyway. -k
-- 
"Lack of skill dictates economy of style." - Joey Ramone
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