Thanks for the pointer.  I've looked into this, and I think that
I need a CVS version of scsictl, because the 1.6 version of the
command does not appear to support any arguments to the format
directive.  Do you know whether I am correct on this point?

I think that the command would be:

  scsictl sd0 format 512

I don't usually run -current, and I'm not looking forward to
building everything from source just so I can get a working
copy of scsictl.  Does anyone know where I might be able to
pick up a binary of just this one command somewhere, compiled
against -current, for i386?

-russ


--- Bob Nestor <rnestor@murphy.dyndns.org> wrote:
> On Thursday, October 10, 2002, at 08:42 PM, Russell McManus wrote:
> 
> > The disk is from IBM.  I have never seen a sector size other than
> > 512: is there something weird about this disk?  Any ideas about
how
> > to proceed?
> 
> These disks are OEM disks configured for Tandem/Compaq/HP systems or

> for use on IBM AS/400 systems.  Both used custom sector sizes. 
There
> 
> are a lot of these disks now showing on on eBay.
> 
> The good news is they can be reconfigured for 512 byte sector sizes
> and 
> then they can be used in typical applications.  I've used them on
> Mac, 
> PC and Sun.  The "scsictl" command was updated to handle this in the

> format command.  See the man page for details.
> 
> You can find some of the technical manuals for these drives
(DCHS-04F
> 
> and DGHS-04Z) on the IBM web site under the name UltraStar.
> 
> Hope this helps,
> -bob
> 


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