Re: bad144 - how useful still? Because it's annoyingly ubiquitous.

[Johnny Billquist <bqt%softjar.se@localhost>]

On 5/27/26 15:43, Jason Thorpe wrote:
> > On May 27, 2026, at 8:15 AM, Anders Magnusson <ragge%tethuvudet.se@localhost> wrote:
>
> > bad144 is not used by NetBSD/vax.
>
> Well, that’s . . . awkward :-)

Indeed. :-)

> > - MSCP drives have their own bad block replacement scheme.
>
> Yah, that’s what I thought.  Thanks for confirming.
>
> > - On RP drives there is a need for BAD144 in the disk driver, but I have never written that support - no RP drives I have used have had any badblocks so I haven't cared :-)
>
> Hah.  Well, I don’t want to rip it out of the system entirely, but I do want to isolate it to only the places where it’s useful.  If the number of those places is currently smaller by a handful, that is not my concern :-)
>
> > I'm quite unsure if there will ever be a need for BAD144 on any VAX drives.
> > People using NetBSD/vax on RP07 with bad blocks are probably very close to NIL :-)
>
> I suspect the number of people using Xylogics SMD controllers on NetBSD/sun3 or NetBSD/sparc is also approximately NIL.  But I don’t want to throw anyone under the bus.

Technically we're talking about RM02, RM03, RM05, RP04, RP05, RP06, 
RP07, RL01 and RL02 drives. Those are the ones we support in NetBSD, 
which use DEC STD 144.
So it's more than just RP07.
And then yes, any 3rd party disk that looks like any of these disks as well.

It is kindof strange to apply this scheme on systems/disks where it 
wasn't defined. But I guess it was sortof adopted in some way by other 
platforms like i386 since it was an existing standard as opposed to just 
cook something up.

But in the end, I also think it could/would be nice if support were 
added in into NetBSD/vax when applicable, but the number of places 
running any of these disks are probably very few now. But it might 
sortof be increasing by people with simulations.

(Did you quote Labyrinth in the original post by the way, Jason?)

  Johnny