Quantum Prodrive Problems

[Richard Elling]

Yesterday we had a little power outage.  When the juice came back 11 SS-1s
were dead.  Here's the error message seen on the console:

  Testing
  Booting from: sd(0,0,0)vmunix
  Can't read disk label.
  Can't read boot blocks.
   Boot load failed
  Type b (boot), c (continue), or n (new command mode)

Needless to say it wasn't shaping up to be a good day.  Fortunately,
sun-managers came to the rescue.  Here's a synopsis and a (risky) fix:

Thanks to everyone that responded to my request for help with my dead
Quantum ProDrives.  Briefly stated, the problem was that after a power
failure, 11 machines refused to boot complaining that they could not read
the disk labels.  Notes:

  o  The problem rests entirely within the drive.  Apparently, the
     Quantum ProDrive line suffers from a problem in which the armature
     will stick.  The most notable symptom is that the drive will not
     spin up.  This problem has affected Quantum drives shipped with
     Apple products.

  o  The cover must be removed before you have a good chance of deter-
     mining if the drive is properly spinning (they are quiet even when
     spinning :-)

  o  The drive access indicator light does *not* indicate that the drive
     is spinning or the armature is moving.

  o  The probe-scsi command will indicate that the drive exists and
     provide the model number, but I believe this is stored in ROM on the
     controller and therefore not an indication that the drive is
     functioning.

  o  Since the drive is not spinning the controller will not indicate to
     UNIX that the drive exists.  This means that you cannot run format
     or sundiag to attempt to fix the drive as they will not recognize
     that the drive exists.  The affected drive will not show up in the
     list of available devices during boot.

  o  The problem has also affected Quantum drives shipped with Apple
     products.  Quantum has apparently provided a firmware fix which
     seems to work.  The majority of our SS-1s were purchased early
     last summer and were shipped in August.  All of our machines that
     were affected (11 total) were from the August shipment.

And now... the moment you've all been waiting for... THE FIX!

Quite simply, whack it.  A solid, but not overbearing whack.  The kind of
whack you use on your kid's behind when (s)he drops ice cream on your
least favorite neighbor's brand new shag carpet :-).  Whack it with the
power turned OFF.  The first whack may not fix it (probably the same with
your kids :-) so repeat as necessary.

    Z                 Z
    |                 |
    |       TOP       |  <--  whacking here seems to work best
    |                 |
    +--u--------------+
      /|\
     light

DISCLAIMER:  This procedure could cause irrecoverable damage to your
drive.  USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!

Special thanks to the sun-managers!!  You're the greatest!

 +-------------------------------+---------------------------------+
 | Richard Elling                | Manager of Network Support      |
 | Auburn University             | Engineering Administration      |
 | Work: relling at eng.auburn.edu  | (205)844-2280                   |
 | Play: relling at cup.portal.com  | AMPR.ORG: 44.100.0.72 (KB4HB-8) |
 +-------------------------------+---------------------------------+