[pups] Reformat RA81/82?

From: Johnny Billquist <bqt_at_update.uu.se>
Date: Sun Apr 1 05:33:16 2001

On Sat, 31 Mar 2001, Gregory R. Travis wrote:

> Can RA81/82 disks be reformatted in the field? If so, is this
> done through XXDP or is there a way to do it from the disk's
> serial port?

Yes, yes and no. If we're talking PDP-11s, you need XXDP.

> My RA82 occasionally lights its FAULT light and extinguishes its
> ready light during write operations. The likelyhood of it
> faulting appears (but I am not certain) to be correlated with a specific
> region of the disk.
>
> About five-ten seconds after the fault, the FAULT indicator turns
> off and ready comes back on. At no time is an I/O error generated
> that the application or the operating system (2.11BSD) see
> so this fault appears to be transient and is resolved by either
> the drive or the drive/controller together.

Hmmm. Normally, bad spots developing on the disk are reported by the
controller. The OS is supposed to remap those bad blocks (BSD don't do
this), so it should never be hidden by the disk.

> It "smells" like a data write error that's resolved after a few
> automatic retries. I'm hoping a low-level reformat could clear it
> up. Am I wacked out?

Not sure, but it smells fish...

> If there's an XXDP exerciser/formatter available I'd appreciate it
> if someone could point me there. It's been nearly twenty years since
> the last time I even tried running XXDP

CZUDE (UDA disk formatter)
CZUDC (UDA and disk drive diagnostics)

All according to an old manual I have. My memory tells me that this
information is obsolete, and that new diagnostics were created, but I
can't find that information...

Hmm, a KDA50 manuals says:

CZUDK (KDA50 Disk drive formatter)
CZUDH (UDA-50/KDA-50 Basic Subsystem Diagnostics)
CZUDI (Disk Exerciser test)
CZUDJ (Subsystem exerciser test)
CZUDL (Bad Block Replacement Utility)
CZUDM (Disk Resident Error Log Utility)

I think these all are the current diagnostics for the UDA-50 also.

        Johnny

Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
                                  || on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt_at_update.uu.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
Received on Sun Apr 01 2001 - 05:33:16 BST