Microport System V/386 install woes

[Sue Peru Sr.]

+---- dave at micropen (David F. Carlson) writes in <489 at micropen> ----
| In article <26531 at clyde.ATT.COM>, wtr at moss.ATT.COM writes:
| > If you are going with the the seagate drive, try using the seagate
| > DISKMANAGER software (not actually seagate's, but they distribute it
| > with their drives) boot dos and use this to do your low level & bad
| > block scan.  this tends to make installation a lot easier.  this is

Actually, in the context of the original, the question is HOW TO FIND OUT
WHICH TRACKS ARE BAD?

In this light, any of the DOS utilities (Speedstor, DiskManager...) can
do a surface analysis for you.  You must then write down the bad tracks and
use those numbers with your Unix install procedures (V/AT = fdisk choice 5)

|  NOT TAKE THIS ADVICE!!!!!!
| 
| Only on SV/AT (ie 286) is the dos bad sector mapping scheme used under
| UNIX.  On SV/386, the AT vtoc virtual disk mapping scheme is used for
| greater SV compatibility.

Sorry, neither V/AT *or* SV/386 can use the DOS bad sector mappings.  V/AT
uses a bad block table at the end of the active Unix partition, DOS uses
bits in in the FAT of the DOS partition.  SV/386 uses a VTOC.

|			     At first I criticized Microport (ie Interactive)
| for this but on second thought: I don't trust DOS bad sector mapping for S&%#.

Again, it isn't the *mapping* the above article was interested in, it was the
*detection*.

| Pedestrian advice is dangerous to your system's health.

Yup.  Glad I'm being "driven" up the wall...   :-)

| "The faster I go, the behinder I get." --Lewis Carroll

So do I...

    -John
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