RA60 hard error on 4.2BSD

[Dave Shimell]

In article <10072 at brl-tgr.ARPA> pes at mitre-bedford.ARPA writes:
>
>	I understand that hard disk errors with DEC UDA-50 controllers
>and RA60/RA80 drives have been a problem for many VAX UNIX installations.
>.............................................................  Has
>anyone had similar problems or know of a cause?  Or better yet a fix?
>Thanks.
>
>Paul Silvey
>pes at mitre-bedford.arpa

	We run binary Ultrix on our 785 and 750's.  Since the beginning
	of the year we experienced bad block problems on one of our
	ra81's.  HDA replacements were tried 3 times by DEC, each
	seeming to cure the problem until a month or so later.  Then we
	would get a crash with a bad block in the inode area.  This is
	particularly painful as fsck can't fix this problem.

	In the end DEC did two things:

	1.	Modified the strapping on each of our HDA'a.  (The
		straps set in a certain way cause less uncorrectable
		ECC errors - contact DEC Field Service.)

	2.	Delivered /rabads - this is a standalone program from
		release 1.1 Ultrix.  Rabads can be used to inspect and
		patch the bad block table.  Once patched, the UDA50
		ensures that the disk appears contiguous to the
		operating system.

	Clearly, rabads could be used on any O/S providing it can be
	loaded into memory (it's a standalone program).  Now the bad
	news - I'm not sure whether DEC would supply you with rabads
	unless you run Ultrix.  However, if you think you have a bad
	block and your Field Service Engineer can't get the hardware to
	work reliably, it might be in both your interests for DEC to
	supply rabads.  Unfortunately, since rabads is DEC proprietary
	software, I am unable to send it to anyone.

	These two mods seem (fingers crossed) to have solved our
	problems.  Yes, we have had crashes but they do not follow the
	patern experienced previously.

Regards,
Dave Shimell.
shimell at stc.UUCP
{root44, ukc, idec, stl, creed, stc-[bcdf]}!stc-a!shimell
-- 

Regards,
Dave Shimell.
shimell at stc-a.UUCP
{root44, ukc, idec, stl, creed, stc-[bcdf]}!stc-a!shimell