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From: sverre@lars.Seri.GOV (Sverre Froyen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.nsc.32k
Subject: Re:  scsi problem (Minix 1.5h)
Message-ID: <9105080448.AA01093@lars.seri.gov>
Date: 8 May 91 04:48:10 GMT
References: <<9105072225.AA05184@musashi.wpd.sgi.com>>
Sender: news@daver.bungi.com
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Thanks to Bruce, Phil, and Des I now understand the floppy problem.
Here is the scoop.

>  you should not use format unit (0x04) just to initialize the floppy
>drive. This will instead try to format the floppy diskette !
>Des.

I used the format because I believed (incorrectly) that the monitor
"raw" command was broken and I needed to get a floopy formatted.
It turns out that formatting takes too long and the Minix scsi driver
gives a watchdog timeout.  Once I took the format command out of
my initialization sequence I was back to the single 5/24 error
that I also get from my hard drives.  In other words I have a
working floppy drive.

The next step is to dig a hole through the ioctl mess in the kernel
in order to get other scsi commands to the drive.  I suspect that the
watchdog timeout problem will continue to be a problem too.
Is there a solution to the latter besides increasing the timeout
length.  (Formatting hard drives can take tens of minutes).

Sverre