HELP!! ( can't add 2nd RLL drive under ISC 2.0.2 )

[Ira Baxter]

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware you write:

>  I am having a great amount of difficulty in adding a second
>  hard disk to my system. The configuration is as follows:

>	Micronics Motherboard 386/20 w/8MB ram

I have one of these.

>	Western Digital RLL Controller WD1006V-SR2
>	Seagate 65MB Hard Drive ST277R
>	Seagate 122MB Hard Drive ST4144R

Hmm.  I currently run a WD1006V-SR2 with a Maxtor 1140, single drive,
with no trouble.  I have not added a second drive on the 386/20,
although I used to have a WD1003 and two miniscribe 6085s, both
running fine on the 386/20 under ISC 2.0.2.

I *do* have experience with the WD1006V-SR2 on a clone 486 with
the 6085s, also under ISC 2.0.2.  It works fine.

>
>  I can use either drive as drive 0. I have formatted both using
>  the controller BIOS and the Interactive formatting program, as
>  it appears that I first have to do a low level format with the
>  BIOS, then format under unix, then reset the drive type with
>  the controller BIOS ( should I really have to do this ). When

My experience says not to do this.  What works for me is:
  1)  Using the on-board BIOS, set the drive type to 1.
  2)  Using the on-board BIOS, format the drive.
  3)  Allow the interactive ADDHARDISK sysadm process to perform
      a full surface analysis.  *Don't* let it format.
No, I don't remember why I do this particular rain-dance. Just that it works.

>  I tried to add the second hard drive, using the sysadm menus,
>  after answering the questions, the drive light comes on, and stays
>  on forever ( or at least as long as I could wait :-) ). At this
>  point I had to reboot in order to use the machine again. I then

I have had the "drive-light-latchup" problem with 1006SRV2 from day
one.  It happens on both the 386/20 and the 486 clone.  Nobody seems to
know the precise cause.  Western Digital looked at it once, (I hassled
one of their support engineers at their Newport Beach site for a day
about it once) and swears it can't happen.  ISC won't look.  I'm
personally convinced there is an ISC disk driver bug having to do with
error reporting on a problem sector.  Since I am technically cheating
by running MFM drives on an RLL controller I am not surprised that
such problem sectors exist.  But the ISC disk driver ought to at least
eventually notice it isn't making any progress on the the read and
declare a time out, so the driver is defective to at least that level.

For me, that latchup currently only seems to occur during booting, and
the cure is simply to reset and re-boot which invariably fixes it.  I
have only had the latchup occur once during normal operation of UNIX
on my 386/20 during three years of operation, so it isn't anything
other than a boot-time annoyance.  I do minimize this by rebooting
only about once every other week.

>  tried to add the disk manually, but this seemed to have a problem
>  at the point I ran mkpart. Same symptoms, red light goes on,
>  wait for the heat death of the universe. I would really like
>  to get the extra 65MB, as it would make some development projects
>  much easier. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

>  P.S. - I also configured the HPDD, just in case, although it
>	 seems this shouldn't be neccessary.

Once should be enough.

Hope this helps.

--
Ira Baxter