About the new s4diag software...

[Thad P Floryan]

Ned Nowotny asks several questions about the UNIXPC's diagnostics ...

I've used the s4diag I posted to format and test (and put online! :-) both a
Miniscribe 3085 (7 heads and 1170 cylinders) and a Maxtor XT2190 (15 heads
and 1224 cylinders).  I know nothing more about the origins of that specific
s4diag than what I originally posted; I suspect it's an unofficial release
from AT&T much like the 3.51c and 3.51d "pseudo-Fixdisks."

The instructions for s4diag expert mode are detailed on pages 3-24 through
3-30 in the AT&T UNIX PC REFERENCE MANUAL.  If someone has a scanner that can
read these pages (8-1/2" by 11"), this would be the safest way; I'm not going
to trust my typing all the charts and tables.  One aspect of this that makes
me uncomfortable is that the MANUAL is copyrighted and I don't know the legal
aspects of so copying.  Any words of wisdom from the net?  But NOTE THIS: the
MANUAL *IS* out of print; we couldn't even buy one for our UNIXPC SIG ...  a
person at AT&T in NJ photocopied the entire manual and sent it to us for the
SIG's library.  Are copyrights valid on out-of-print books?

re the question:

"	Can the original s4diag run a disk surface test on more that 1024
	cylinders?  In other words, is there any chance that the limit in
	the original s4diag only applied to formatting disks?  (Pretty
	unlikely, huh?)
"

NO! I wasted days trying to figure out WTF was wrong with the system I was
upgrading with the Miniscribe 3085.  The "stock" s4diag permitted specifying
1170 cylinders and gave every indication of doing everything "right", passed
the surface check, etc.  My installation of the Foundation Set would then bomb
when attempting to make a filesystem on the HD.  ONLY with the "new" s4diag
did everything succeed.  I suspect the "stock" s4diag EITHER has the constant
"1024" hardcoded somewhere OR is doing modulo 1024 arithmetic in a "for" loop.
My "guess" is that after 1024 cylinders, the format wrapped back to cylinder
zero and overwrote the sector and cylinder information there.  After using the
"new" s4diag and reformatting, everything went smoothly (BTW: this assumes one
has the WD2010 chip for > 1024 cylinders (and the P5.1 mod for > 8 heads)).

And in reply to several others' questions: I believe the "new" s4diag I posted
is the same one available from several other sources (such as ICUS and John
Milton); if someone would compare the checksums of what I posted with what is
available from those two sources, then we'd know!

Thad Floryan [ thad at cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]