Xref: utzoo comp.sys.amiga.tech:8296 comp.sys.amiga:44063 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!rutgers!ucsd!helios.ee.lbl.gov!nosc!crash!ncr-sd!noel!greg From: greg@noel.CTS.COM (J. Gregory Noel) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech,comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Problems with Maxtor drives (merged threads) Message-ID: <0485.AA0485@noel> Date: 19 Nov 89 00:34:46 GMT References: <22441@gryphon.COM> <8911180603.AA17118@jade.berkeley.edu> Lines: 87 Rick Flower (rickf@pnet02.gryphon.com) writes: >Well, I was the original person that posted about my "Maxtor" problem, and I You were the original poster in one of the threads; the other thread was started by Jonathan Crone. But, as you indicated, your problem was obviously one of the configuration being incorrect. I (and apparently others) have had to solve this problem, as well. A second problem that I (and others) have encountered is a BindDrivers failure. The curious thing about the failure is the parallel symptoms giving various people problems, not only for those of us with 2090s, but other controllers as well. In particular, you say... >.... It DOES however >come up with "NOT-A-DOS-DISK" the very first time it boots however.. I spin up >the drive (it's in an external case) and then turn on the A2000. I end up >having to re-boot the system after it gets going a bit for it to work >correctly... I had the same symptoms here, as well, after I finally got my configuration numbers untangled. I leave my computer running most of the time, so this was more of a nuisance than anything else, but it bothered me, so I kept futzing with it, trying different preping options, and so forth. Eventually, the drive stopped working at all; BindDrivers would hang whenever the SCSI drive was connected. I was doing a number of other changes to the hardware when that happened (adding some new memory), so my recollection of the exact circumstances is fuzzy, but the machine crashed at least once while I was preping the drive. (This is what Scott Thompson identifies as the triggering event for him.) Note that this is a third problem, that may or may not be related to BindDrivers hanging. (This could be a symptom of a partial failure of BindDrivers, not actually recognizing the drive, but not hanging, either.) >Ooops.. I almost forgot why I wrote this message... I was talking with Kelly >Keith of Creative Computers (Lawndale) [ Kelly is the Service Manager ] and he >mentioned that the Maxtors sometimes have "wierd" SCSI commands and don't work >as well as they could or as well as CDC or other equivalent drives.. Just >thought that I would throw in that tid-bit.. This is interesting; could you get some more details? >I'll assume that if you were to disconnect your Maxtor drive from the system, >that the BindDrivers would run correctly enabling a complete boot?? Yes. In fact, when I remove the Maxtor drive, the ST-506 drive I also have on my 2090 controller boots up just fine. (Removing the ST-506 drive doesn't make any difference; it also hangs with only the Maxtor connected.) >You could >possibly "and I do mean possibly" connect the drive to the SCSI bus after it >has powered up, but I WOULDN'T -- AND I EMPHASIZE THAT -- WOULDN'T try that >unless EVERYTHING else failed.. It is a strange problem though. I'm a software type; I've considered trying this, but this is sufficiently dangerous that I haven't had the courage. I don't think it would help anyway, since BindDrivers wouldn't have found the drive, so you couldn't access it anyway. And, on the other thread, Jonathan Crone (CRONEJP@UREGINA1.BITNET) writes: >thanks all for the messages asking if the Guru strikes the maxtor > on the prepping step... >That ain't the problem.... the damn thing gurus right on the >binddrivers.... can't even get close to formatting it I think the question is, did you \ever/ get past BindDrivers? Or has it hung every time? If the problem is something like an incomplete write during prep, or if prep clobbers the disk configuration as a part of the formatting and doesn't reset it until the end, then a guru during a prep might be significant. >nearest thing i can get is from Maxtor is that their drive takes a long >time to return a Ready from the drive after the Reset is asserted >by the hardframe... and the [Microbotics] Hard frame driver isn't used to >having to wait for the drive to respond to the reset... so it Gurus... >I have a description into Microbotics of the difficulty, This sounds like something similar to what Rick Flower was saying about the "weird" SCSI commands. If you find out anything more concrete, I'd like to know about it.... >come ON now.... Maxtors aren't exactly a trivial brand of drive!!!! Yes, and apparently it's one used by CBM quite a bit, so you'd expect that these kinds of problems had been shaken out some time ago. Maybe CBM only uses the smaller-capacity drives and not the bigger ones? (How would that make a difference???) -- J. Gregory Noel, UNIX Guru greg@noel.cts.com or greg@noel.uucp