Path: utzoo!utgpu!cunews!bnrgate!brchh104!brchs1!bnr.ca!rice.edu!sun-spots-request
From: tim@gumby.cs.caltech.edu (Timothy L. Kay)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun
Subject: 1024 byte sectors on SS2?
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Message-ID: <3637@brchh104.bnr.ca>
Date: 5 Jun 91 14:17:00 GMT
Sender: news@brchh104.bnr.ca
Organization: Sunspots, Pseudo-Unmoderated
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Approved: sun-spots@rice.edu
X-Original-Date:    29 May 91 00:42:26 GMT

A friend has added a 1GB Micropolis 1598-15 to their SS2.  The disk
was shipped formatted for 512-byte sectors, and that seems to work
just fine.  For that sector size, 70 sectors fit on a track.
Micropolis technical support tells me that the drive can support
1024-byte sectors, and then you get 38 sectors per track.  That would
increase the size of the formatted drive by 89MB.

My questions are,

	1.  Can Sun/OS support 1024-byte sectors?

	2.  Can the Sun/OS format program reformat the drive?

	3.  What format.dat entry do I want?  I read the section on
	    format, and I don't know how to set the bpt and bps
	    fields.  How am I supposed to know how many bytes make
	    up the irg and address and data marks?  What happens if
	    I get it wrong?  Does the format program then miscalculate
	    which sectors are defective?

	4.  Micropolis technical support says that the drive will also
	    support 4096-byte sectors, but he doesn't know how many
	    on a track.  Should I consider this possibility?

Tim