[31586] in Hotline Meeting
log 10597 (floptical drives)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Michael S. Drooker)
Thu Jan 11 17:11:27 1996
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 17:11:24 -0500
From: miked@iris.mit.edu (Michael S. Drooker)
To: oworkstations-mtg@matisse.mit.edu
Cc: sad@MIT.EDU, miked@iris.mit.edu, hotline@MIT.EDU
For the record, here is what I have uncovered while helping Rebecca
Frankel solve her "floptical disks on Athena SGI workstations"
problem, case log no. 10597.
Rebecca reported difficulty formatting 3-M floptical disks having
tried to do so on a number of SGI workstations. She also reported that
formatted disks failed to mount properly so that she could not copy
files to them. After some investigation here is what she and I have
found to be wrong.
One of Rebecca's disks is bad, very, very, bad. When inserted into a
floptical drive it induces a SCSI bus reset. After the reset, it will
go through the formatting process, but it will not mount properly.
This has been demonstrated on several workstations. She will try to
get it replaced by the vendor.
One of Rebecca's disks is good. She has found 2 out of 5 Athena
workstations that will accept the media, format it using
"/usr/Cadmin/bin/cformat", and mount it properly so she can copy her
files to it.
On the "good" workstations that Rebecca has used, she notes that the
floptical drive icon failed to change state upon insertion of the
floptical disk, yet the mediad did mount the disk as evidenced by the
"df" command and the successful copy operations. I do not know what
"proper" behavior of the icon should be in this case. DS-HD floppies
inserted into the floptical drive do change the icon when their format
is recognized as MAC or PC.
Some of the machines Rebecca "tested" may have software or hardware
problems. In all cases, I recommend that they be checked with known
"good" media. If the following outcomes are repeated, corrective
action should be taken, as indicated:
m66-080-29 (18.63.1.20) - "cformat" failed with "fail in performing
low level format" error message. floptical disk did not mount and copy
operation was unsuccessful.
w20-575-100 (18.187.0.121) - disk drive failed to latch disk. (I
suggest replacement of the floptical drive on this one.)
w20-575-107 (18.187.0.128) - "cformat" does not display a 20 meg
floptical format option. This could indicate something wrong with the
floptical drive, or it could indicate that a conventional floppy drive
(3.5in, DS-HD) is installed in this workstation instead of a floptical
drive. Such a thing is possible if the drive has a SCSI adapter, and
the drive will work satisfactorily with DS-HD media in MAC and PC
format, not indicating any problem until a floptical disk is
inserted.
Cheers,
Mike D.
