on 7/20/00 1:08 AM, Charles Redmond at charlie25@my-Deja.com wrote something
like:

> Hi,
>> There's always MOP since you appear to have a VAX.
>> 
> I was very disappointed in NetBSD Vax 1.3.3. So much so I swapped my second
> 3100M30 for a VT420.

    Well since 1.4P SCSI DMA has made my 3100/m30 tolerable to use, but
compiling on a KA42 would take more than twice as long than my 5000/25 which
is more than slow enough for my likings already.

> I don't have the space for it either since I have 3 DECstations already
> running NetBSD pmax, a Sparc running Solaris 8, a Sparc running OpenBSD and a
> alpha running Digital Unix 3.2.

    I know how that goes.

> Well in the message for scsi cam there is a message listed that the bytes per
> block for the id of cdrom is wrong. This cdrom is a 512 bytes per block drive
> since that drive boots Solaris 2.5.1 fine and that os requires 512 bytes per
> block as well. only later versions of Solaris have dispensed with that need.

    I'm not by any means qualified to answer on this, but I think the 512
byte/block mode is referring to the data being sent to the SCSI driver. I
think it means that the drive will read the variable sized block partitions,
but then translate them into 512 byte blocks before sending it out. Jason
Thorpe or Matt Thomas would be the ones to answer that. I've always heard
"has to be 512 byte/block, etc." Maybe there is a jumper that will force the
drive to stay in 512 byte blocks?

> The disk is an RZ58. No resistors to remove.
> The scis id's are different as I have checked that from the cnfg command on
> the prom. My other reason for going with Ultrix is that there are two
> PMAGC-CA's nstalled and netbsd does not support dual screen yet.

    I've got a PMAG-E (PXG+) and a PMAG-C in one of my 240's, though I think
Ultrix could have handled dual screen mode a lot better than they did. At
least it's there and supports true color and PEX.

>> There doesn't appear to be anything wrong with the CDROM, so that
>> wouldn't get you anywhere.
> I will attach anoterh disk and try that as well as trying with no hdd and see
> how far that gets.
> I am also going to try to borrow an RRD cdrom from an alpha XL233 at work.
> Buried in my dim memory I can remember on the decstation-managers list that
> only certain brands and models of cdrom were explicitly listed in the Ultrix
> source as installable cd devices. Perhaps that is my issue.

    Hmm I think my RRD-42 is a Sony mechanism, but it might be a Toshiba.
It's rather confusing to me that it would give you a CAM error at the point
where the Install is trying to read the geometry/disklabel from any attached
drive(s), and then blames it on the CDROM. You're probably right on using
DEC CDROMs there has to be a reason they needed to use DEC firmware in them.

>> Should be possible if they are 512 byte-block formatted and dd'd, never
>> tried anything like that before and I have no experience with tape drives.

> The problem for me is that there are seperate
> filesystems on the cd and the bytes per block varies on each filesystem. It's
> not one consistent size. (man setld indicates this on Ultrix).

    I'm fairly certain dd will take into account the input block size
automagically, just add bs=512 to the command I *think*

> Given this is off topic, thanks for the help.
> 
> Charles

    Heh I hope I'm not feeding you misleading/wrong information!


    Chris