[31621] in Hotline Meeting
log 10597 (floptical drives)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Michael S. Drooker)
Tue Jan 16 10:39:54 1996
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 1996 10:39:38 -0500
From: miked@iris.mit.edu (Michael S. Drooker)
To: oworkstations-mtg@matisse.mit.edu
Cc: miked@iris.mit.edu, hotline@MIT.EDU, sad@MIT.EDU
Hi folks,
Here is some more feedback on the floptical situatin from SGI's John
Lowry.
...
OK, I think we're getting close to solving these mysteries. They are
mainly caused by bugs in 5.2 with 20Mb media.
>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.
This could be a hardware error. However, there is a known problem with
mediad in 5.2 that gives this message. Try using the command line
(you may also want to try killing mediad before this):
# mkfp -t dos -x /dev/rdsk/fds0d2.3.5.20m
(or whatever is appropriate for your system)
>w20-575-100 (18.187.0.121) - disk drive failed to latch disk. (Clearly
>a hardware problem, we will proceed with replacement of the floptical
>drive on this one.)
If you want SGI to replace this you will need to provide us with the
serial number of this system. (We have our own procedure, ed.)
>w20-575-107 (18.187.0.128) - "cformat" does not display a 20 meg
>floptical format option.
Again, this could be problems with mediad in 5.2. You should try
formatting from the command line.
>My take on this is to replace the floppy drives on the disfunctional
>machines (which seem to be working properly in all other respects).
I don't believe that the drives are necessarily faulty. See my
comments above on mediad. You could try switching them to another
machine and switching a good drive to this machine if you want to
investigate further. Formatting from the command line should work. The
culprit is likely to be mediad in 5.2 I'm afraid.
>I am interested in your views on three aspects of this experience:
>What could be so wrong about a piece of removable media to cause it
>to reset the SCSI bus upon insertion into a drive?
Resets can be caused by defective media. I'm not sure of the actual
reasons and might be able to get some more information if you really
need it, but I suspect that all you need is the info that the media is
defective.
Should the floptical drive icon change state upon insertion of a
floptical disk? If it doesn't, what might cause this?
Yes, it should change. We have had some problems where mediad icons
did not change to reflect having media inserted. These were documented
in bug # 169892. They have been fixed in the newer versions of Irix.
Why would "cformat" not display the 20MB formatting option when a
previously tested and "good" disk is inserted?
Again, this is a known 5.2 mediad problem.
Please let me know if you require any more information or if you want
to give me the serial num of the floptical with the faulty latch.
John Lowry
...
In summary, it would seem that we are seeing a known bug in IRIX 5.2
mediad, plus a little bad hardware, and one bad floptical disk.
(More than) Enough said.
Mike D.
