Allison,

Thanks for the suggestion to use XXDP.  I plan to get set up with that.
As far as "using the wrong constant", that's exactly my point: the 
Vaxstation wouldn't allow me to choose constants, since it thought 
it already knew the "right" parameters for the RD54.  I suppose you
answer translates into something like: "no way to do that on a 
Vaxstation 2000, use a PDP-11."

Doug


> > However, be forewarned: I also had three utter failures.  I subjected a 
> > perfectly good (worked with NetBSD!@) RD54 to this procedure, it went 
> > through the formatting stage just fine, and then ground noisly away 
> > in the "ChkPass" phase, until it woke the baby, and I had to halt.
> > I tried a second time the next day.  Same result (except the baby was on
> > a stroll.)  The other 2 failures were another ST-225 and ST-251 I had
> > astutely purchased on E-bay.  They also got to the ChkPass phase, 
> > issued several dots to the terminal, and then gave up.  
> 
> You used the wrong constants.
> 
> > Now, my question is: If the Vaxstation 2000 thinks it knows the drive
> > parameters (i.e., RD54, RD31, RD32), it doesn't go through that
> > complicated dialog with you.  The bad part is, then you also have no
> > control over these parameters.  I had read somewhere that often the reason
> > for failing in the ChkPass phase was that the RBNsize (replacement
> > blocks) needed to be set
> 
> Yep.
> 
> > Of course this is no emergency.  I've a hoard of RD54s, and much larger
> > and more boring disks to play with.  But I particularly miss that one.
> 
> My solution is xxdp on PDP11.
> 
> Allison
> 
>