Subject: Re: -current/4110
To: Erik E. Fair <fair@clock.org>
From: Herb Peyerl <hpeyerl@beer.org>
List: port-sparc
Date: 09/20/1995 08:11:23
"Erik E. Fair" (Time Keeper) <fair@clock.org>  wrote:
 > not sure if the same things are true of SCSI. Would someone with more
 > experience than I care to comment about formatting SCSI at other than 512
 > bytes/sector?

I don't fall in the "someone with more experience" category but this
brought to light Intel SVR4.2 for the Multibus-II/i386 which I've
had the displeasure to be exposed to.  You apparently are required to
re-format (ie: scsi level format) your drives with a sector size of 
1024 before you can install the OS.  For some reason the installer 
makes some bad assumptions about the size of your drive and builds 
the filesystems accordingly. If the drive is formatted for a sector
size of 512, the installation blows chunks. Unfortunately, there are
only a small number of drives that allow themselves to be formatted
in this way or so I'm told.

Had this been from any other vendor, I would have been perplexed but
seeing as how it's Intel, I'm not surprised.