adding disks to 3b2/600

[Julian Elischer]

We have just added two miniscribe 9380 (338 MB formatted)
drives to a 3b2/600 we have here. All works well until you
decide to actually look at what it is you have on the system.

You discover that you have a "303MB" disk (prtconf)
 This means we are losing 35 MB of room per disk.

As usual there is NO documentation regarding the 'format'
program and where or how it decides what to format the drive as.
Nor is there any information as to how the manufacturer supplied
bad block list can be used to spare out possible bad sectors.

I have the horrible feeling that this is another case of the
"well it's not one of the drives WE sell so it aint supported"
mentality. I have searched the format programs with 'strings'
for clues, but though there are plenty or references to a 
'script file' and a 'defect table' I have no idea what these might 
look like, what their names are or even how to tell the #$%^%^&
format program that there IS a script to use.

Is there ANYBODY out there who has ANY idea how these work?
Or even if the is any documentation? 

there seem to be two (possibly related) format programs.
/etc/format
and 
/usr/lib/scsi/format

If anybody out there can help I would be very thankful.
I still haven't QUITE given up on the manuals. Knowing unix
munuals I still may find it under 'ls' or 'how to restore backups'
or some other apparently irrelevant heading!

julian Elischer

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