Formatting blues

[Jeffrey L Bromberger]

Howdy all.  I'm battling a problem so bizarre, I just wanna chuck my
machine through a window.  Here's what it is.

I've got a 3b1 (2Mb/DRUN from factory/2010/ICUS).  It worked well
until last Sunday.  That's when my primary drive (an old DEC RD-52)
finally bit the dust.  It looks like one of the heads crapped out, as
the errors hit starting on block 64 (maybe the 8th head).  No problem,
I say, I just bought a new Maxtor 2190 (well, refurbed not new).  I'll
put that new drive in as a primary.  That's when things started going
wrong.

I put the drive in the place the old drive was.  I pull out the
terminating resistor, and try to format it.  And it hangs.  It goes as
far as asking for confirmation, and that's it.  I never get the
message "Formatting Cylinder XXXX".  OK.  Maybe I did something wrong,
so I changed it to the second drive.  And the same thing (nothing)
happens.

Next idea - I've done some minor goof on the ICUS board (even though
I've been using it for the last 6 months).  So, I take it out
(dropping the main board back to a P5, not 5.1) and replace it with
the correct jumper.  To the same result.

With or without the ICUS board, with or without the 2010, with or without
the terminating resistor block.  I get the same thing.  
And I know the machine works!  I can read both disks (at
least the first disk reads until the errors hit).  It ran fine.
Except it won't format.

Can *ANYONE* give me an idea as to what might be going on???  This is
slowly giving me an ulcer.  Maybe faster than I originally thought.
Boys and girls, can you say f r u s t r a t i n g ??  I knew you could
:-(

Help!  Please!

j

(PS: pardon my sentence fragments - I'm just in that sorta mood right
now.)
-- 
Jeffrey L. Bromberger
System Operator---City College of New York---Science Computing Facility
jeffrey at sci.ccny.cuny.edu			jeffrey at ccnysci.BITNET
	Anywhere!{cmcl2,philabs,phri}!ccnysci!jeffrey