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From: izumi@fugitive.berkeley.edu (Izumi Ohzawa)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Build an external disk as boot disk with 2.0
Message-ID: <1991Feb9.074846.20254@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 9 Feb 91 07:48:46 GMT
References: <1991Feb7.225634.28188@news.cs.indiana.edu> <16112@milton.u.washington.edu> <1991Feb9.010023.20660@news.cs.indiana.edu>
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In article <1991Feb9.010023.20660@news.cs.indiana.edu>
  stung@greatwhite.cs.indiana.edu (Sho-Huan Simon Tung) writes:
>In article <16112@milton.u.washington.edu>
   wjs@milton.u.washington.edu (William Jon Shipley) writes:
>>
>>Yikes!  This is not the approach I would recommend.  Our 2263 arrived
>>with a copy of Izumi's post AND a fair sized manual.  In this manual
>>you are instructed which side of the disk SCSI connector is pin 1.
>
>However, Figure 2.16 and Figure 2.13 which show the scsi
>connector are kind of confusing. Use Figure 2.13, Figure 2.16 should
>be interpreted upside down when the print circuit board of the drive
>is at bottom.

The SCSI connector itself has a label (bottom side) which indicates
which pin is pin-1.  Unfortunately, you can't see it when the
drive is mounted.  So, remember to make a note of it before you
mount the drive.

Also, cable from NeXT is keyed, so you can't connect it the wrong way.
If you bought an internal SCSI cable  from a 3-rd party, then you
must be careful.

Thanks to Chris Songer at Purdue Univ., I am now also a
happy customer of Fast Access (Elmhurst, IL, 708-530-7749,
contact Mal Steadman).
$1430 total for (M2263SA + shipping to CA via UPS ground).
He (Mal) says there's no shortage of the drives as an earlier posting
might suggest.

By the way, I have done the low-level format of Fujitsu
M2263SA on a 030 cube using "/usr/etc/disk".  There is now
a command "Format" from the interactive prompt of 'disk'.  This in turn
execs "/usr/etc/sdform /dev/rsd0a", so you can do it via
'sdform' too.
It was a bit scary to do this, but it seems to work.
It takes about 20-30 min for M2263SA.
(This was done with a beta version of 2.0., but
I assume there is 'sdform' on real 2.0  too -- sigh, still waiting...).

The low-level format isn't really needed.  
The drive comes pre-formatted  from  factory.
But, I would just feel better if I did it.
If a drive develops "MEDIA ERRORS" as recorded in /usr/adm/messages,
you will probably have to do a low-level format.
Redoing BuildDisk can't fix MEDIA ERRORs.

And, just for additional info, if BuildDisk app fails for some reason.
You can try from Terminal "builddisk sd0" command.  It's more flexible,
and you can prepare your own BLD.* script to adjust directories
to be loaded onto disks to be built.

-- 
Izumi Ohzawa             [ $@Bg_78^=;(J ]
USMail: University of California, 360 Minor Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720
Telephone: (415) 642-6440             Fax:  (415) 642-3323
Internet: izumi@violet.berkeley.edu   NeXTmail: izumi@pinoko.berkeley.edu