I just picked up a ST32430N hard drive, which I figured would be
just like the other one I have (the original main label is long gone on
this new drive).  Here's how my sparc sees the two drives (the i386
agrees on the geometry settings):

probe(esp0:3:0): max sync rate 10.00Mb/s
sd0 at scsibus0 targ 3 lun 0: <COMPAQPC, ST32430N, 0554> SCSI2 0/direct fixed
sd0: 2006MB, 3992 cyl, 9 head, 114 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 4110000 sectors
probe(esp0:5:0): max sync rate 10.00Mb/s
sd4 at scsibus 0 targ 5 lun 0: <SEAGATE, ST32430N, 0510> SCSI2 0/direct fixed
sd4: 2162MB, 3992 cyl, 9 head, 61 sec, 1024 bytes/sect x 2214183 sectors

    So the two drives identify fine.  sd0 is the drive I've had for over
a year, sd4 is the new one, which I've heard was from a NeXTstation. 
Oddly enough, while the drives appear to be identical even at the chip
level, and are jumpered exactly the same, I'm having problems using this
new drive.  Would this entirely be because of the 1K blocksize, or
should that not be a problem at all?

    With the i386, I can dd to it without any errors at all.  When I try
to disklabel it, I get several screenfulls of kernel messages, and the
label doesn't get written.  On the sparc I can't even seem to write to
it, as shown here:

Light# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sd4a
esp0: !TC [intr 10, stat 83, step4] prevphase 1, resid 2000
esp0: !TC [intr 10, stat 83, step4] prevphase 1, resid 2000
esp0: !TC [intr 10, stat 83, step4] prevphase 0, resid 2000
sd0(esp0:3:0): esp0: timed out [ecb 0xf86e70d8 (flags 0x103, dleft 0,
stat 0)], <state 4, nexus 0xf86e70a4, phase(c 3, p 3), resid 0, msg(q
0,o 0) >
sd4(esp0:5:0):esp0: timed out [ecb 0xf86e70a4 (flags 0x3, dleft 2000,
stat 0)], <state 4, nexus 0xf86e70a4, phase(c 3, p 3), resid 0, msg(q
0,o 0) >
sd4(esp0:5:0):esp0: timed out [ecb 0xf86e70a4 (flags 0x3, dleft 2000,
stat 0)], <state 4, nexus 0xf86e70a4, phase(c 3, p 3), resid 0, msg(q
20,o 0) > AGAIN
[...]

    FWIW, the i386 SCSI BIOS detects this drive, but does not show
parameters and does not assign the drive a DOS letter, unlike the other
drives in the machine.  So I cannot even FDISK the drive under DOS.

    Is there something else wrong with this drive, or is it unusable
because of the 1024 byte blocksize, or do I just need to set a flag or a
jumper or something???  Any help would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks!

                                                          Will Ferry

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 William O Ferry  <woferry@CMU.EDU> | finger: woferry@Warp.RES.CMU.EDU
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