Microport System V/386 install woes

[Karl Denninger]

In article <26531 at clyde.ATT.COM> wtr at moss.UUCP (Bill Rankin) writes:
>In article <1984 at sugar.UUCP> karl at sugar.UUCP (Karl Lehenbauer)
>writes:
>>I'm helping a friend of mine who owns a computer store try
>to install $1200 worth of Microport software on a 386/20 clone.
>It has three meg of RAM and an 80 meg Seagate drive. 
>
>>First off, the surface analysis program doesn't work.  It bombs.
>
>If you are going with the the seagate drive, try using the seagate
>DISKMANAGER software (not actually seagate's, but they distribute it
>with their drives) boot dos and use this to do your low level & bad
>block scan.  this tends to make installation a lot easier.  this is
>not a fault of microport and/or unix, but rather a good point of
>dos: it's easier to use a simplistic program loader for basic system
>checking/formatting.

How many of you out there have a *reliable* system with Microport and the
Seagate 80M drives? (ST4096 -- 9 heads, 1024 cyls).

We found that this drive *requires* that you set one of the HD options,
"Control byte", to 8 (default is zero) or the drive will fail at an
indeterminate time in the future (usually within 48 hours).  This was
consistant with Novell Netware, MSDOS, and Xenix.  All three work 
flawlessly if the control byte is set to "8", and fail with it at "0".
Novell's surface analysis has fits immediately, as does Xenix's
"comprehehsive test".  DOS often works for several hours or days.

Uport doesn't allow changing this parameter.  I assume the ROM value is
used -- which is normally zero!  Not many clones have a ROM table entry 
for the Seagate 4096 drives...... 

The end result I would expect from this combination would be a failed drive
(it's not electrically damaged, just "blown" format-wise) shortly after
installation, if it even gets through the file system build.  We have not
had the time to pull one of these drives and check it out with Uport/386,
but some time soon I'm sure we'll find a good excuse to check it out (like
when someone orders the combination :-)

In any case, I'd be careful, especially if you don't have a drive type for
the unit in ROM -- you may find that the drive simply will not work for you.

This is the one place where Microport's "dynamic disk configuration" seems 
to be missing something -- in this case, vital information.

If you get nowhere with the Seagate, I'd give a Miniscribe 6085 a shot --
it's a standard type 13 drive, and runs great with the Uport systems.  72M
formatted capacity (1024 cyls X 8 heads).

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