Problems with ESIX and SCSI 330MB disk

[Jeff Skaletsky]

Here's a good one:

I've got ESIX Rev. D. running on a 25mHz Micronics motherboard w/cache
and a Micropolis 71MB MFM hard disk as the first drive.

I bought a Miniscribe 9280s 330MB disk and an Adaptec 1542B controller
(after I realized that the free ST01 card I had was bad - thanks anyway,
det!); I set up the Adaptec as carefully as I could, and did a low-level
format of the Miniscribe from DEBUG in DOS, then a verify.  I got lots 
of errors, then found that the Miniscribe was set for parity disable,
and the Adaptec parity enable.  I reset the Miniscribe jumper.  A
subsequent format and verify was much better, though not perfect.

I was unable to find anything in the two-book doc set on adding a
second drive, but found the "diskadd" utility script in /etc.
I ran it, selecting controller 1 and drive 0, and it ran fdisk, then a verify
(apparently "adddisk -v 10") as well.  It asked me some questions
about how I want the disk set up, and I asked for two partitions
of roughly 165MB each (it thinks there are 318 cylinders with 64
heads - however, I've heard of similar tricks played with disk geometry.)
Shortly after a message saying "writing partiions to disk" or something,
the script ends.

So I injected various things into a copy of the script, and ran it again;
it apparently performs the "mkpart -i -f /tmp/partitions -Pxx -Pxx etc",
at least there's no complaint.  But it's failing at the mkfs with
"can't open /dev/dsk/c1d0s3" (after I removed the redirection to /dev/null
of stdout and stderr).

It's obviously finding c1d0s0 for the verify and mkpart -i -P stuff...
I don't have the full set of docs, so I don't know how to ascertain that
the partitions are really getting written (does mkpart -t just read the 
partitions file, or the disk?).  I'm stumped...

The only other thing I could think of is that maybe the jumpers that
configure the drive are set wrong - I don't have good docs on the 
drive, just a few pages and they refer to the jumpers for setting heads
and tracks but no details, just that that's what they are.  If anyone
has this drive and knows the correct settings, please email me...`

Likewise if you have any ideas why I can't use this disk.. yet.


Thanks,
Jeff S.





--

|Jeff Skaletsky N6TJO   -       Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA| 
|jeff at poseur.jpl.nasa.gov   UUCP: ames!elroy!poseur!jeff  (818)393-1058|