[Coco] SCSISYS question

[Gene Heskett]

b gorisek wrote:
> Gene Heskett wrote:
>>>
>> SCSI has been historically treated as if one needed to have an
>> unlimited   supply of virgins to sacrifice over it.  Thats not true IF
>> the terminations are correct.  Termination voltage supplies are
>> responsible for far more of this bitchyness.  With the usual
>> requirement to block the external devices from powering the host in
>> the event they are turned on but the host isn't being usually done
>> with an SI power diode of some sort, the end result is that the actual
>> supply for the termpacks is reduced by that nominally .7 volt drop in
>> that diode, with the remaining 4.3 volts then used to power the terms.
>>
>      YES , Scsisys 2.2 likes to kill virgins I have two drives that have
> no responses to an adaptec scsi card in a pc  " adaptec 2940 "
>       card bios reports no drives found after a scsisysfmt  program from
> scsisys 2.2  .The drives will spin up but thats all, no other
>       actions from drives can be done . The drives in question are 
> "Quantum  Pro Drive LPS 105S" 105meg and " HP97560" 1.3gig
>       I believe the scsi information that is on drive has been erased by
> scsisysfmt program and drives rendered useless for all future
>       uses .
> 
That would be most unusual.  scsi drives are formatted at the factory, 
as have been all ide hard drives since forever, and if you ask them to 
format themselves, they'll sometimes run a very short diagnostic to 
check the formatting, but usually will just ignore that command & return 
control to the os instantly.  That doesn't mean the logical format is 
correct for the adaptec to recognize as scsisysfmt may have written info 
to LSN0 that the adaptec knows nothing about so it returns a no valid 
drives found message.

No modern drive, and that includes the LPS105, can be surface formatted 
without having access to the factory tools & gauges.

I'd be interested in seeing a hex dump of LSN0 from those drives, which 
os9 should be capable of doing.

I only used scsisysfmt once, on a maxtor 7120s, it took all night to do 
the scan and verify as it laid down the os9 filesystems data, but there 
were no errors and I ran that drive till stiction reared its ugly head 
and told me it was time for a new drive.  I'd guess at about 12 years it 
ran.  I can give it a bump to get it started and it will run today.

>       Thanks ,
>        Boris  
>>
>>
> 
> 
> www.Frys.com 
> 


-- 
Cheers, Gene