Formatting blues

[Jeffrey L Bromberger]

In article <1991Apr1.023108.22419 at sci.ccny.cuny.edu> I wrote:
>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,

Well, it wasn't the drive.  Must've had a brownout, cause the drive
formatted on my stock 7300 (1/2Mb, no DRUN, no ICUS).  Once I can
scrape up the $$$, I'll get a UPS.  But that's besides the point.

>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???

I *am* able to get the MAXTOR to format on the stock machine.
Unfortunately, it's formatted as the 67Mb size.  Almost 100 Megs of
wasted space. :-(

Can a WD2010 be functional but not work when it comes to formatting?
Could the ICUS board extend some things so far that it won't work?  I
realize that I had initial problems with the board - the ribbon cable
from the main board to the upgrade board was soo long (8 inches) that
I had timing problems.  Now, the cable is 2 inches long (plug
included).  The machine runs (well, ran) fine with the shorter cable -
the longer one gave almost 4 megs a day of HDERR's.  The ECO wires I
added to the board for the ICUS socket are all as short as possible.
They all are intact.  No spare loops :-)

Has anyone else had this problem?  Up until the mods to the main
board (about 2 years ago), it formatted drives.  Come to think of it,
I haven't needed to format drives since then.  Is anyone out there
willing to format the MAXTOR for me since I cannot?  :-)  Maybe
someone just wants to buy it?  It's only got 1 hour of spin-time on
it.

j
-- 
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