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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!metro!metro!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!howland.erols.net!EU.net!enews.sgi.com!news.mathworks.com!fu-berlin.de!irz401!orion.sax.de!uriah.heep!news From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: hardware woes: SCSI tape, floppy, and controllers Date: 30 Sep 1996 22:22:43 GMT Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden Lines: 57 Message-ID: <52ph7j$d93@uriah.heep.sax.de> References: <DyJFpt.5DL@midway.uchicago.edu> Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch) NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.heep.sax.de Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Newsreader: knews 0.9.6 X-Phone: +49-351-2012 669 X-PGP-Fingerprint: DC 47 E6 E4 FF A6 E9 8F 93 21 E0 7D F9 12 D6 4E Tim Pierce <twpierce+usenet@mail.bsd.uchicago.edu> wrote: > 2.1.5 distribution. (I'm aware of the infamous `unix-to-unix > tape problem', but was under the vague impression that DATs are > less susceptible to incompatible formats than QIC or other > traditional tape systems. Might the problem be simply that the > Solaris-written DAT is unreadable by the WangTEK? Using dd and > experimenting with a variety of options produced no better > results than tar.) QIC is actually the most reliable system to exchange tapes, at least for QIC drives with the same capacity. > When trying to read this tape at home, using `tar -t -b 10 -f > /dev/rst0', tar fails and I get the following diagnostic on the > console: > > st0(aha0:5:0): MEDIUM ERROR asc:31,1b sks:80,0 Well, a medium error. True hardware problem with your cartridge. Try using another one. > % /usr/sbin/fdwrite -f boot.flp > > ... the following messages appear on the console: > > fdc0: input ready timeout > fd0c: hard error writing fsbn 0 (No status) > fdc0: direction bit not set > fdc0: cmd c5 failed at out byte 1 of 9 > fd0c: hard error writing fsbn 0 of 0-17 (ST0 40<abnrml> ST1 > 4<sec_not_fnd> ST2 10<wrong_cyl> cyl 0 hd 0 sec 1) Does this happen with all floppies? > According to an article of J\"org Wunsch's in Deja News, the `no > status' bit means that the drive doesn't recognize the floppy, > and either the drive has ceased to generate index pulses or > something equally catastrophic has occurred. Is this an > accurate summary of the problem? Will it suffice to say that if > I take the machine into the shop? It looks at least seriously catastrophic. It's a utter mishmash of various errors, so i'm not sure about the chicken and the eggs. The <wrong_cyl> itself could also indicate a jamming drive (seek didn't work). OTOH, command 0xc5 is `write', `direction bit not set' means the FDC wasn't ready to accept any data for writing though. This could also be a missing index pulse. Since the READY line has been dropped from the floppy bus, the FDC believes the drive were always ready, thus it would try writing even if the drive doesn't spin. -- cheers, J"org joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)