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From: whitcomb@vivaldi.Berkeley.EDU (Gregg Whitcomb)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: GVP controller comments/questions
Keywords: GVP, controller, Seagate
Message-ID: <14376@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 5 Jun 89 18:51:55 GMT
Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU
Lines: 40

Well, I decided to purchase the GVP A2000/2M/Ok controller and have
some comments/questions:

I also purchased a ST277N drive.  The first drive I received passed
the "low-level format SFORMAT" step in the GVP installation setup.
However, the amigados format command bombed out early on during the
first partition format.  I was able to try different partitions and
get it to somewhat work, although not to my satisfaction (I ordered
the drive from ComputAbility).  I contacted both ComputAbility and
GVP.  ComputAbility said that the GVP software should have remapped
the bad blocks (apparently the trumpcard s/w does) and GVP said that
the Seagate drive firmware did not do its job during the low-level
format.  I sent the drive back, and $17 worth of postage later 
received another ST277N drive. This one worked. (well, the amigados
format command did bomb out on one partition, but trying it again
it passed okay).

comments:

The GVP installation software is automatic (if you don't have problems
or want to do something different than their fixed procedure).  
Unfortunately, the GVPprepHD program (no source provided) asks
how many partitions you want and their respective size (in megabytes)
and then generates the mountlist entries and I believe copies this
information to the drive it a special place (any details on this). 
Anyway, this is okay except that it doesn't utilize all the cylinders
on the drive.  I noticed about 7 unused cylinders after looking at
the mountlist entries.  My guess is that the prep program is rounding
off the "max size" for the current partition as you enter in the
desired partition sizes.  That is, it starts out reporting 61.74M max
size (or something like that) which is not the exact amount.  Has
anyone experienced this problem and has been able to set up partitions
which fully utilize the drive?  (okay, so 80K lost isn't that significant
when you have 62M, but what happens when you setup a 1G drive?)
At least they could provide for more advanced users: source code for
installation programs (they're selling the hardware, not the software!),
prompting for cylinder counts instead of megabyte sizes, etc.


-Gregg Whitcomb (whitcomb@ic.berkeley.edu)