Micropolis 1578 on SS1+

[Chris Johnson]

In article <8354 at brazos.Rice.edu> xyzzy!stukenborg at dg-rtp.dg.com writes:
>X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 192, message 4
>
>Has anyone had any luck installing a Micropolis 1578-15 (380MB) drive on a
>Sparcstation 1+?  I have brought up the machine diskless, but I can not
>get "format" to successfully format the virgin disk.  No matter what disk
>geometry parameters I give, I always get errors when it writes the backup
>label.
>Block 631024  (1201/14/9), Fatal non-media error (illegal request)
>Warning: error writing backup label.
>Label failed.

This error message is most likely resulting from trying to write to block
numbers beyond the end of the disk.  That is, the block number is out of
range.  My bet is that your configuration is bad.

When you boot up with an unformatted disk attached and configured, the
boot messages include the results from a SCSI Inquiry and SCSI Read
Capacity command for the drive.  This will tell you how many blocks total
you have.  Use the Unix program "factor" to factor the total number of
blocks to the least common denominators.  (You remember your 7th grade
math, don't you?)  Pick combinations of those factors that produce "nice"
values for cylinder, sectors per track and tracks per cylinder.  If that's
not possible, factor the total number minus 1, 2, 3, etc. until you can.
Use those numbers.  It doesn't matter if they match reality.

Good luck.

   ...Chris Johnson          chris at c2s.mn.org   ..uunet!bungia!com50!chris
 Com Squared Systems, Inc.   St. Paul, MN USA   +1 612 452 9522