Bertram Barth wrote:
> At the moment all sectors are believed to be good. No sector replacement
> is respected. All physical sectors are accessible via the MFM-controller,
> since real c/t/s addressing is done. Access of replacement sectors instead
> of the defect sectors has to be done via software, and this feature is not
> implemented.

This is a problem.  I really can't run NetBSD on the VAXstation 2000
without reliable storage.  I only have one MFM drive that has no bad
sectors (out of 5 drives), and this one is only 20 megs.  Trying to find
another perfect drive would be dificult.  I suppose the only way to run
NetBSD now would be to use that drive and mount the rest over NFS or
even totally boot off ethernet. 

However, the bad sector remapping shouldn't be too hard to implement.  I
assume that NetBSD itself already has some support for sector
remapping.  After all, bad144 is supported, right?  Adding support for
the VAXstation 2000 bad sector remapping should be reasonably
straightforward  after the format of the data on the drive is figured
out.
What needs to be done here?  I'd be willing to help out.  I don't have
any unix kernel or VAX experience so far, but I can learn.  I have used
C quite a lot. I'd also be willing to try figuring out data structures
if necessary.

Alternatively, it may be possible to get bad sector remapping on the
VS2000 with a simple hack.  After reading the bad144(8) man page, I see
no reason why bad144 can't be used.  It's true that it isn't the method
used by the VS2000, but it shouldn't be too much of a problem after
NetBSD is loaded.  You'd just have to make sure that there are no bad
sectors in the files needed at boot time.

-- 
|  Boris Gjenero <bgjenero@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>              |
|  Home page:  http://www.undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca/~bgjenero/     |
|  "Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to   |
|  depend greatly on our own point of view." - Obi-Wan Kenobi, ROTJ  |