Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!sdd.hp.com!spool.mu.edu!cs.umn.edu!uc!noc.MR.NET!gacvx2.gac.edu!gacvx2.gac.edu!scott From: scott@nic.gac.edu (Scott Hess) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: PLI Superfloppy vs. CubeFloppy (DIT) & Floppyworks; NeXTConnection Message-ID: Date: 11 May 91 03:25:05 GMT References: <1991May9.131840.11866@engage.enet.dec.com><1991May9.165912.1042@bitnerd.uucp> Organization: Gustavus Adolphus College Lines: 40 Nntp-Posting-Host: nic.gac.edu In-reply-to: juan@bitnerd's message of 9 May 91 16:59:12 GMTLines: 40 In article <1991May9.165912.1042@bitnerd.uucp> juan@bitnerd writes: In article <1991May9.131840.11866@engage.enet.dec.com> tenny@ootool.dec.com > ... Anyway, the default (#3) for the floppy drive works, MOST OF THE TIME. > There is no on/off switch, so I just leave it plugged in all the time. > Here's the problem: the machine only boots about 50% of the time. > Sometimes it boots without a hitch. Other times it stops. > If I have the verbose ROM Monitor enabled, I see these messages like... Enabling the monitor verbose mode resulted in similar messages to the ones Dave reports when the system was powered up. Looking at the messages, it was clear that the system was trying to boot from the floppy instead of the hard drive. If at this point, I broke back to monitor mode (tilde), and issued a "b sd" command to reboot the machine, it would boot just fine. Here is what I think is going on. The hard drive on my machine takes about 15 seconds to spin up. It's a loud drive (an HP full height) so I can easily hear the heads going through the initialization procedure. On power up, the ROM monitor looks around for SCSI devices, and sees the floppy, but since the hard drive is not yet powered up, it does not see the hard drive. This is the case. We've had this problem with some high performance drives connected to the NeXT. Basically, these drives were pushing the technology (or something) and took quite a while to power on/spin up. The machine would then try to boot off the darn floppy . . . NeXT needs to put in some ROM code to allow the setting of a delay time to let the disk spin up. [BTW: The drive was exceeding fast, 650M, Core (I believe). It was pretty much the same drive as the NeXT one, but with a better controller (or something). Anyhow, it was _fast_. Probably about as fast as the 400M in the NextStations, which is also faster than the 600M, so far as thumbnail tests indicate.] Later, -- scott hess scott@gac.edu Independent NeXT Developer GAC Undergrad