Xref: utzoo comp.sys.amiga.hardware:7785 comp.sys.amiga.audio:485
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cbmvax!jesup
From: jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com (Randell Jesup)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware,comp.sys.amiga.audio
Subject: Re: Query: M.A.S.T., Fujitsu, Large capacity disk drives, DATs
Message-ID: <20254@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Date: 2 Apr 91 07:24:18 GMT
References: <1991Mar6.145948.17848@javelin.es.com> <1991Mar7.191718.8668@digi.lonestar.org> <1991Mar8.085326.27349@evax.arl.utexas.edu> <20120@cbmvax.commodore.com> <40684@cup.portal.com>
Reply-To: jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com (Randell Jesup)
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
Lines: 32

In article <40684@cup.portal.com> FelineGrace@cup.portal.com (Dana B Bourgeois) writes:
>OK, now *I* have a question on very large drives.  Over in the Sun
>thread a warning was posted recently about Unix SCSI drivers not
>handling drives larger than about 1.07 Gig. properly.  I called Sun
>and they confirmed they don't support drives larger than 669 Meg but
>they are working on a new driver that will fix the problem and will
>probably be selling the larger SCSI drives themselves Real Soon Now.
>
>I believe Randall said Amiga has no problem with very large SCSI drives
>but perhaps we could hear it just One More Time?  How big a partition
>can FFS support?  OFS?

	The current A590/A2091/A3000 scsi drivers have the same 1gig
limit Sun (I think) and Dec (both VMS and Ultrix) hit - we don't check the
block address for whether it fits in a 6-byte read.  The next general A3000
release should support it.  I suspect most or all 3rd party SCSI drivers
have the same problem currently (at least we're in good company here, Sun,
Dec, etc).

	If you low-level format with direct scsi commands for larger logical
blocks, you should be able to handle up to 2 gig with 1024 byte logical SCSI
blocks.  HDToolbox can't do this, though once you get it changed it should
work ok (we've tested it with things like Magneto-Optical disks with 1K
blocks, and steve has tested it a bunch I think).

-- 
Randell Jesup, Keeper of AmigaDos, Commodore Engineering.
{uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!jesup, jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com  BIX: rjesup  
Disclaimer: Nothing I say is anything other than my personal opinion.
Thus spake the Master Ninjei: "To program a million-line operating system
is easy, to change a man's temperament is more difficult."
(From "The Zen of Programming")  ;-)