3B2 Drives

[Greg A. Woods]

In article <4263 at sactoh0.SAC.CA.US> eric at sactoh0.SAC.CA.US (Eric J. Nihill) writes:
> I am attempting to use a few Maxtor XT-1065 drives on a
> AT&T 3B2/400.
> I can get the drive to write the defect table and to format.
> When I attempt to write the sanity pattern, however, I get
> the following message:
> 
> GETPHYS:  Could not initialize disk 0
>
> If I attempt to write the sanity pattern for the second time,
> the hard disk lets out a howl and then writes the pattern ok.

It sounds (no pun intended) like you might have either the wrong
geometry for the drives, or a bad motherboard.

I assume since you said "idtools", you mean the most recent version,
not what was known as "devtools".  You need idtools for the larger
disks (>8 heads, I think).

The 1140's should be 15 heads, 17 sectors/track, 512 bytes/sector, and
918 cylinders.  You can format most 1140's to 1024 cylinders.

Some people say that you can run them right out to 1224 cyl., as long
as you aren't booting off them.  I never tried it.

> The drive seems to be very noisy. As it is formatting and 
> verifing, the drive makes a serirs of regular clicks. Also, upon
> first power-up, the drive will let out a howl.

Most Maxtor drives are noisy, and most howl when doing a re-cal.

> Is there a hardware incompatability between Maxtor drives and
> AT&T 3B2's?

Nope.  I use them all the time!  Actually I had 2 Maxtor-1140's on a
3B2/400, running 1024 cyl., before the lightning hit it!
-- 
						Greg A. Woods

woods@{eci386,gate,robohack,ontmoh,tmsoft}.UUCP
+1-416-443-1734 [h]  +1-416-595-5425 [w]    VE3-TCP	Toronto, Ontario CANADA