Multibus ST-506/QIC-02 (was: Re: SGI IRIS 1400 ...)

From: Frank McConnell <fmc_at_reanimators.org>
Date: Sun Jul 21 00:29:01 2002

Joe <rigdonj_at_cfl.rr.com> wrote:
> I once attempted to repair one of HP's HP-IB hard drives used a
> Vertex drive internally. I THINK it was a V160 but I'm not sure now.
> I never did find a replacement that would work. IIRC I tried other
> brand drives but I couldn't LL format the new drive with the normal
> user stuff from HP so I don't know if the replacement drives were
> incompatible or ?? or if the replacements failed due to my inability
> to LL format them.

Part of the problem is that the HP controller in the drive expects to
see a high-level format on the drive. Back around HP-UX 7.0 I found
some arguments to mediainit (-GD I think; the finding was done by
running "strings" on the mediainit executable and looking for a
getopt(3)-style option parsing string) that got it to tell the drive
to do a low-level format and write a new high-level format as well.
Made the disk portion of a 7946 usable again after going "bad" and
being formatted in a PC for testing.

-Frank McConnell
Received on Sun Jul 21 2002 - 00:29:01 BST