My 3B1 FIXDISK 2.0 experience (so far, LONG)

[Bill Mayhew]

Yep, the fixdisk 2.0 that I got from AT&T in about March of 1990
had a couple of bad sectors on track 0 and a couple of bad sectors
about half way through the first disk.

The fixdisk is a big cpio archive.  What I did was to format a
fresh disk, then copy the bad disk onto the new, ignoring the error
reports.  I faked a cpio header for the bad area, losing only the
CONTENTS file and one of the less interesting support files.

I decided I didn't like the 3.51m kernel very much.  The metermaid
display and nicer any-key-including-non-typing-keys unblanking the
screen were welcome additions to the kernel.  What I didn't like
was that I had much worse performance with uucp transfers than
before.  I could only get about 1000 char/sec with 3.51m, while
3.51 manages about 1400 char/sec.  I tested this pretty extensively
with big (~100K files) transferring to a lightly loaded HP9000 mini
using a TB+ modem, so I know it isn't my imagination. If you don't
use an external modem, 3.51m may be for you.  There have been some
reports of weird lock files getting scrambled and locking out boot-up
on 3.51m.  Another plus for 3.51m is that you get recognition of the
WD2010 disk controller.

The fixdisk is still worthwile because the support programs with
fixes all seem to be backwards compatible with 3.51.

==Bill==
-- 
Bill Mayhew      NEOUCOM Computer Services Department
Rootstown, OH  44272-9995  USA    phone: 216-325-2511
wtm at uhura.neoucom.edu   ....!uunet!aablue!neoucom!wtm
via internet: (140.220.001.001)