woods@most.weird.com (Greg A. Woods) writes:

> [ On , September 21, 1998 at 21:53:05 (-0400), Paul F. Wells wrote: ]
> > Subject: Is it really the disk drive or something else?
> >
> > I have installed NetBSD 1.3.2 on an SS2 with 64 meg with SUN2.1G
> > hard drive.  The problem I am experiencing is that if I power off
> > the machine and restart, the disk drive acts as though it has
> > media errors...there are CRC errors, soft read errors, etc.  The
> > system sometimes will not boot (short read) or panic immedaitely
> > after loading the kernel.
> 
> This sounds like an interface problem, not a drive problem.  It could be
> cables, termination, connectors, line driver ICs on the drive itself,
> line driver ICs on the sparcstation, etc.  It could even be a power
> supply problem, or a power connector or cable problem.
> 
> How *exactly* do you have the drive connected?  What, if anything, is
> connected to the other SCSI connectors on the system, and *exactly* how
> are any such things connected.
> 
The drive is the only scsi device and it's internal; the only jumper
I had to fiddle was the motor start so it would spin up on the 386 boxes.
I replaced it when I put the drive back into the sparc.  It's been a while
since the drive has been outside of the sparc and I don't recall its
termination state.  I can check again.

> Does the drive exhibit any similar errors when connected to the i386
> machines?
> 
No, rather, I didn't attempt to do anything other than just format it.
No windows and no other OS...I just wanted it back in the sparc.

> Formatting is not likely to fix/change anything here, esp. if it didn't
> work after the first attempt....
> 
It isn't that formatting is unsuccessful, that works, even inside the sparc.
After freshly formatting, I netboot in order to reinstall.

> Do you have any other SCSI drives you could use to experiment with on
> the sparcstation?
> 
Sure, in fact, I should have tried to load windows or something on the
'failing' disk but didn't...I can try that later.

> In general the SS2's SCSI interface is quite robust and reliable, though
> it's very finicky about termination and cable length.
> 

Thanks much,
Paul
-- 
Paul F. Wells                      <paul@wellserv.com>