I have just confirmed that if I take the generic kernel from the 1.5_ALPHA
snap dated June-22 running on a 1.5_ALPHA2 sytem I can at least newfs my 
rz56 on MicroVax 3100.  I had been unable to do so running 1.5_ALPHA2
kernel.

Tom G. Christensen <tom.christensen@get2net.dk> indicated he had not had
problems with doing this on a 4000 with the 1.5_ALPHA2 kernel.

It appears there were some changes:
Diff for /syssrc/sys/arch/vax/vsa/ncr.c between version 1.31 and 1.31.2.1
between 6/19 and 6/28 - though Andrew indicates he has been happy with a
6/29 kernel.

I may try an earlier version of ncr file with the ALPHA2 sources to see if
that is the source of problems.
johnh...

On Thu, 14 Sep 2000, Andrew Gillham wrote:

> Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 01:52:51 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Andrew Gillham <gillham@vaultron.com>
> To: John Hayward <John.C.Hayward@wheaton.edu>
> Cc: port-vax@netbsd.org
> Subject: Re: 1.5_ALPHA2, newfs and rz56
> 
> John Hayward writes:
> > 
> >    After I label the disk and in the process of doing a newfs it proceeds
> > to print the backup super blocks then stops with the following error
> > message:
> > write error: 0
> > wtfs: Read-only file system
> > 
> > Follwing that the disk label is messed up.
> > 
> > Mike Dowden suggested a low level format and I found that test 75 on the 
> > 3100 console provided for formatting a scsi drive.  This was performed
> > successfully - so I believe the hardware is ok.
> > 
> > Is anyone else seeing these kind of problems?
> 
> Yes!  With my Vaxstation 3100/M38 and an external IBM 1GB drive.
> With a kernel compiled on June 29 it works, with a new kernel it reports
> no label and data read from the drive is "goofy" and the drive can't be
> labeled.
> 
> I think some is "Bad Wrong(TM)" somewhere.  I guess I need to do a
> binary search on it.  I pretty much know the kernel built on June 29 works
> and a kernel around August 3 does not.  Time to search. :(
> 
> > I note that 1632*15*53 = 1297440 where the dmesg indicates 1299174
> > I don't know if that is because of bad sector forwarding or different
> > number of sectors per track over the disk or something else.
> 
> I see something like this also.  I have 4119*5*99 = 2038905 while the
> dmesg reports 2055035.  I used 2038905 to create a 'sd3e' partition.
> This has been working great ever since the SCSI was fixed and DMA was
> added, etc.  In the July timeframe something seems to have broken.
> I'll start looking at the CVS logs and try to checkout a specific date
> and build a kernel.
> 
> -Andrew
>