Bad block prohibits Xenix boot.

[Dave Hammond]

Problem:	Bad block prohibits Xenix boot.
System:		Everex 286 with Maxtor 70Mb drive, running SCO 2.2.1
Background:

While uucp-ing a 5+ Mb file from a remote to this machine, a rash of
'No swap' and 'Bad block' errors invade the console, accompanied by
a loud, continuous "whine-click-whine" noise.

I grab for the reset switch, figuring--no problem, I'll just 'fsck'
here, split up the file on the remote, and try again.  Wrongo.

During the boot diagnostic check (the A...Z countdown) I start getting
'Bad block' errors, "whine-click...", etc.  Xenix won't go past here.

Ok, try booting from a floppy, mounting the hard drive on /dev/mnt
and fsck from there.  Nope.  Xenix says "not a System 3 filesystem".
At this point I must assume that the superblock got trashed.

Questions:

The first is the obvious--can I reclaim use of the root filesystem without
reloading Xenix?  (my guess is "no")

The second is--what situation did uucp get into which allow random writing
into seemingly "sacred" disk areas?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

--
Dave Hammond
DSI Communications Inc.
daveh at dsix2.uucp