William O Ferry happened to mention:
> 
> Excerpts from internet.computing.netbsd.netbsd-help: 12-Oct-97 Re:
> ST32430N with 1024 byte.. by Dave Huang@bga.com 
> > I'm no expert on this, but from what I understand, NetBSD has problems
> > with block sizes other than 512 bytes. You should be able to do a low
> > level format and reformat it with 512 byte blocks though. (But I don't
> > know exactly how... some mode page settings, I think).
> 
>     If anybody can give me directions on how to do this I'd really
> appreciate it.  I wasn't aware that low-level formatting could change
> the blocksize, and the only utility I have (the DOS one that came with
> my i386 controller) doesn't seem capable of changing the blocksize.  Is
> there a low-level formatter for NetBSD?

Not yet (unless someone wants to pleasantly surprise me).  It is high on
my list of things that I really wish I was working on right now, but that
doesn't help solve your immediate problem.  If I were you, I would cable
the drive up to a sun somewhere and use format under sunOS.  When the
smoke all clears it will be formatted with 512 byte sectors.  If you are
adventurous, you could do some serious hacking on the NetBSD scsi disk
drivers so they would work with a 1k block size. :-)  I would be most
suprised if that drive wouldn't be happy to format with a 512 byte or
most any block size.

>     I really don't want to return this drive if it can be made useful,
> but at the moment it's completely useless.

I got a drive some time ago that came formatted with 1k sectors (it seems
that MacIntosh systems like em that way), and I fixed it up by using the
SunOS formatter - so at least you know it can be done.

	Tom

-- 
	Tom Trebisky			Steward Observatory
	ttrebisky@as.arizona.edu	University of Arizona
	http://kofa.as.arizona.edu/	Tucson, Arizona 85721
					(520) 621-5135