Xref: utzoo comp.sys.att:6933 unix-pc.general:3255 Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!thad From: thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) Newsgroups: comp.sys.att,unix-pc.general Subject: Re: About the new s4diag software... Message-ID: <20250@cup.portal.com> Date: 9 Jul 89 05:53:20 GMT References: <1626@cadillac.CAD.MCC.COM> Organization: The Portal System (TM) Lines: 44 Ned Nowotny asks several questions about the UNIXPC's diagnostics ... I've used the s4diag I posted to format and test (and put online! :-) both a Miniscribe 3085 (7 heads and 1170 cylinders) and a Maxtor XT2190 (15 heads and 1224 cylinders). I know nothing more about the origins of that specific s4diag than what I originally posted; I suspect it's an unofficial release from AT&T much like the 3.51c and 3.51d "pseudo-Fixdisks." The instructions for s4diag expert mode are detailed on pages 3-24 through 3-30 in the AT&T UNIX PC REFERENCE MANUAL. If someone has a scanner that can read these pages (8-1/2" by 11"), this would be the safest way; I'm not going to trust my typing all the charts and tables. One aspect of this that makes me uncomfortable is that the MANUAL is copyrighted and I don't know the legal aspects of so copying. Any words of wisdom from the net? But NOTE THIS: the MANUAL *IS* out of print; we couldn't even buy one for our UNIXPC SIG ... a person at AT&T in NJ photocopied the entire manual and sent it to us for the SIG's library. Are copyrights valid on out-of-print books? re the question: " Can the original s4diag run a disk surface test on more that 1024 cylinders? In other words, is there any chance that the limit in the original s4diag only applied to formatting disks? (Pretty unlikely, huh?) " NO! I wasted days trying to figure out WTF was wrong with the system I was upgrading with the Miniscribe 3085. The "stock" s4diag permitted specifying 1170 cylinders and gave every indication of doing everything "right", passed the surface check, etc. My installation of the Foundation Set would then bomb when attempting to make a filesystem on the HD. ONLY with the "new" s4diag did everything succeed. I suspect the "stock" s4diag EITHER has the constant "1024" hardcoded somewhere OR is doing modulo 1024 arithmetic in a "for" loop. My "guess" is that after 1024 cylinders, the format wrapped back to cylinder zero and overwrote the sector and cylinder information there. After using the "new" s4diag and reformatting, everything went smoothly (BTW: this assumes one has the WD2010 chip for > 1024 cylinders (and the P5.1 mod for > 8 heads)). And in reply to several others' questions: I believe the "new" s4diag I posted is the same one available from several other sources (such as ICUS and John Milton); if someone would compare the checksums of what I posted with what is available from those two sources, then we'd know! Thad Floryan [ thad@cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]