Revectoring bad blocks on RA81 disks

[Steve Dyer]

> Rumor hath it that a program is available through DEC field service to
> revector bad blocks on UDA disk drives (RA81s in particular).  Details
> of the rumor are that the program is a "standalone" program written by
> the Ultrix folks called /rabads that can be booted instead of vmunix
> and that non-Ultrix sites running 4.2BSD can obtain the program
> through their field service reps. 

We have Ultrix and RA81's, which means that we were incredibly eager to
get our hands on "rabads" as soon as it was available from our field
service organization.  At least on the particular RA81's we had, "rabads"
was no solution at all, promptly crapping out as soon as it hit our
bad spots.  Same thing happened with a newer version of the program
"which works", as our field rep quaintly told me.

We are still having trouble with one of our RA81's almost 9 months
after installation of the machine.  DEC seems eager to help, but
remains confounded by the complexity of the drive and the UDA50 MSCP.

Result: the next two VAX 785's we got had an Emulex/Eagle combination.
Not a problem from the day they were installed.
-- 
/Steve Dyer
{decvax,linus,ima,ihnp4}!bbncca!sdyer
sdyer at bbnccv.ARPA