Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!psuvax1!news From: ehrlich@cs.psu.edu (Daniel Ehrlich) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.rt Subject: Re: 3rd Party Drive in IBM RT Message-ID: Date: 17 Feb 90 15:39:19 GMT References: <91.25dc43cf@venus.ycc.yale.edu> Sender: news@cs.psu.edu (Usenet) Organization: Computer Science Department, Penn State University Lines: 33 In-Reply-To: newman@suncis.ycc.yale.edu's message of 16 Feb 90 23:17:51 GMT In article <91.25dc43cf@venus.ycc.yale.edu> newman@suncis.ycc.yale.edu (Andrew Newman) writes: Andrew> Now I've really done it. I went ahead and got one of those zippy HUGE Andrew> EESDI drives that cost hardly anything from CDC. I intend to put it in Andrew> my RT Workstation running ACIS. The drive I bought is a WREN VI with the Andrew> EESDI controller. Pertinent specs I have are: Andrew> # of Sectors Per Track: 53 Andrew> # of heads 15 Andrew> # of cylinders 1632 Andrew> This is a 676 Meg. drive. Anyway, naturally I can't seem to format the Andrew> thing. I first tried with the ACIS Standalone format program. That Andrew> generates a series of ugly messages about HD ERROR and doesn't even try. Andrew> The next step was to try booting the IBM hardware diags. They don't come Andrew> up at all. Finally I pulled an AIX startup disk (yuck! phew!) and inserted Andrew> it. We got to a step where we were going to format the disk. The program Andrew> asked me for the information listed above and then proceeded to dy with a Andrew> similar HD ERROR. I tried a variety of combinations of values. All to Andrew> no avail. The question is: Andrew> 1) Has anyone used this disk in an RT under EITHER AIX or ACIS? Andrew> (the drive is CDC part number 94196-766) Andrew> 2) Does anyone have any generic advice for me? Check the data transfer rate for the drive. The EESDI controller for the RT will handle drives with a transfer rate of 15MHz. If memory serves the CDC drive is 20MHz. If the drive is 15MHz please let me know as we are looking for ways to upgrade our disk storage too. -- Dan Ehrlich Voice: +1 814 863 1142 FAX: +1 814 865 3176