The death of my floppy drive

[3964]

Hi,
	I seem to have a real problem here.  The floppy drive on my
UNIX-PC has died and seems to have taken the whole system with it.  Here
is the scene:

	I was working away on a new version of STEVIE/vi and decided
	it was time for a backup.  I whipped out one of my trusty
	unformatted floppies and slapped it into the drive.  Flipping
	over to the UA I went into the floppy disk menu and called up
	format.  

	The floppy drive lights went on as usual, and I got some errors 
	in the UA window (immediately).   Like -- Illegal instruction,
	core dumped.  The UA window immediately died (odd to say the least).  

	At this point I noticed the status manager had died.  I tried
	to spawn a full screen UNIX window.  Nothing happened.  I
	tried again and got the following panic message:

		baddma: FEFF
		FDERR ST:0 TR:0 SR:1 DR:0
		DMACNT: FEFF
		DCRREG: F4
		MCRREG: 9D00
		baddma: FEFF

		panic I/O error in push

		Double panic I/O error in push

		Press Hardware reset to reboot

	Needless to say I knew this was not good.  I reached around
	and pushed the hardware reset.  Screen clears, two blocks are
	printed on the screen, light comes on on the floppy drive
	and more blocks keep printing...  Hmmm... very bad, I say
	I reach around and turn her off.  Now the waiting game.  Come
	back in a hour still no go same problem.  Try to put in
	the diagnostic disk.  No go It does not even seem to read
	it (at least no menu).

Now to the meat of the matter.  First some background.

I have a lot of experience with UNIX (I have been using it since
version 6 on a PDP-11 in my college days), I am a hacker at heart
but no hardware expert.  I have had my UNIX-PC since last november 
(bought it in during the fire sale), but have only had net access
since mid feb. 88.  The machine is actually a 3B1, 2M, full
development kit, OBM used for uucp connection to uunet.  It is out of
warranty and not under service contract so no help coming from ATT.

What I need to know is, anyone else had a similar problem?  Assuming I
have to replace the floppy what is compatable? I would not mind tring
a 1.2M floppy (that could read my old backups etc).  What is involved
with yanking the floppy and replacing it?  Any suggestions would be
greatly appreciated...

BTW:  I have used a lot of DEC equipment so I know a VAX is dead in
the water without a console floppy, but I sure miss not being able
to set the boot address to a given device like I could on the
PDP-11/70's.  How come I can't (somehow) boot my PC directly off
the hard disk?  This is very annoying.  Please attempt e-mail any responses.

Thanks in advance


Darrel Carver			...!{killer, ihnp4}!wp3b01!drc
Work phone (914) 397-4265	ATTMAIL: dcarver
Home phone (914) 761-7941