Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!batcomputer!piplani
From: piplani@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Michael Piplani)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Re: Optical disks for the IRIS...
Keywords: optical disks introl
Message-ID: <9007@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Date: 5 Oct 89 20:32:00 GMT
References: <8910022156.AA16481@trouble.cs.nps.navy.mil> <42458@sgi.sgi.com>
Reply-To: piplani@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (Michael Piplani)
Organization: Cornell Theory Center, Cornell University, Ithaca NY
Lines: 31

In late August I posted that we were getting the INTROL read/write optical
disk drive for our personal iris.  Sad to say it worked for a weekend, then
one of our programs crashed the pi reading a file off the disk 
(it was the programs
fault/not the disks).  Everytime I ran fsck on the disk, more and more
errors would be found, until it got so bad I couldn't mount the disk.

I then tried to reformat the disk ,recreate a file system, run a fsck on
the new file system, and then mount it.  Every time I ran fsck I would
get hundreds of errors, and was never able to mount the disk.

Our site was the first personal iris that Introl had installed one of their 
disks.  I understand (from them) that the disk drive is quite robust on
the higher end 4d's.  It would be nice if someone could confirm that for
us.  On the whole the installation was very easy.  I've been told that
they are working on their driver so it will handle the personal iris.

One thing that is not made perfectly clear in their adds is that the drive has
only one head, so to get the maximum capacity from the optical disk you
have to unmount it, flip it over, and remount.  The key spec. is that you
get 270+Meg a side, formatted.

I do hope they get it fixed, because I don't know of another read/write many
time optical disk for the IRIS (I've seen adds that TRIMARCHI makes a 
read/write disk for the vax using the same SONY engine.).

Michael Piplani
Cornell/Hospital for Special Surgery Program in Biomechanical Engineering
piplani@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu
piplani@crnlimap.bitnet
(607)255-0990