Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!ll-xn!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!ENGVAX.SCG.hac.COM!DEAN
From: DEAN@ENGVAX.SCG.hac.COM (Dean Stephan)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: 3600's, RA82's, and other stuff...
Message-ID: <8805181839.AA00482@hac2arpa.hac.com>
Date: 18 May 88 18:39:00 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 25

Hello,

We recently received a pair of 3600's.  Since they are running under a
removable media requirement, we can't use the RA82's (we already have
interested parties, so don't bother asking for them).  In the process of
installing the equipment, we tried to build a system on the RA82's to
try and near down some of our hardware problems.  As a result, I discovered
something rather nasty that may have appeared here before, but people
may not be aware of.  An RA82 must be initialized with a cluster size
of greater than 1, but the VMS distribution tape that DEC ships out has
a cluster size of 1 as the initialization size.  If you are building a
standalone system for the first time, you will need to find some-one with
a VAX already up and running so you can get a BACKUP image description
that will initialize the disk with a cluster size > 1.  This is not
documented in the installation manual that DEC ships with the media.
As a matter of fact, following the instructions in the DEC manual for
the 3600 will never work unless DEC has a special distribution for 3600's
that we didn't receive.

Something to be aware of should you need to build a new system on a
3600 with only RA82's.  Or any system that has only RA82's on it.

Dean. (dean@engvax.scg.hac.com)
Disclaimer: My employer is not responsible for the facts, and I am
        responsible for my opinions.