Original message:
> We have a 3000/600 with lots of 9G disk drives (narrow ones, both
> Seagate and Micropolis). One of the Micropolis 1991 developed problems
> and Micropolis replaced it with a 1991NT. This is a 3.5" drive at
> 7200 RPM (as opposed to the old one, which was 5.25", 5400RPM).
> This one failed. The next one also failed. Before calling Micropolis
> again, I'd like to ask: does this (new) model work at all in this
> configuration? The problem is that after installing it, in about
> 10 hours the drive activity light comes on and stays that way.
> No I/O is possible. 'scu show sense' report that everything is OK.
> On the other hand an 'scu verify media' reports 'XPT SCSI IO failed',
> CAM status = CAM SEL TIMEOUT (0xa) -- target selection timeout.
> The bus is properly terminated, the bus is short (only two external
> drives in a dual enclosure).
> SO: Does this drive work for anyone (Micropolis 3.5", 7200 RPM, 9G
> -- 1991NT)?
Thanks to:
Dr. Tom Blinn
Phil Farrell
Gyula Szemenyei
Mr. Dustin Fu
aad_at_nwnet.net
The responses pointed out termination and cooling. These were not the
problem in my case (but be careful, the drive is hot as hell -- one
has to have proper cooling). It was also stated that this drive failed
with DUnix 3.2C while working with NT.
Finally I got hold of 'John' at Micropolis, who actually went beyond
the 'doesn't work -- we'll replace it' procedure. I had to upgrade the
firmware in the drive to p43D (I had to flash three files using the
Micropolis provided utility), which didn't help and I had to change
byte '0xf' on code page '0xa' from '0x10' to 0 (using a utility provided
by them -- as far as I could tell 'scu' can't do this). Now it seems to
work. At least does not crash where it used to.
If you happen to have this drive (1991NT, 9G Tomahawk -- 7200 RPM,
3.5" full height, Micropolis) and want to reproduce the error: I had
and AdvFS file domain spanning three 9G drives (a 1991NT, an old 1991
and a Seagate Elite-9). I nearly filled the domain (about 0.5G free left),
which sometimes was enough to cause a crash, than executed a 'defragment'
on the domain, which always crashed, and trashed the file domain.
Now this procedure does not crash. If you want to do the same, you will
need 'p43D.exe' from techsupport.micropolis.com (may be in /pub/TomaHawk
-- can't remember), and the 'asputil.exe' file from their BBS (which is
password protected). You will also need the detailed instructions to do
the upgrades/mode page editing (they are not trivial). They only have
these utilities for a PC with a SCSI card and DOS drivers (which I didn't
have -- I crossed my fingers and did everything in Win-95 in a DOS
window).
One little piece of info: You may want to call 800-847-8153 and ask
for tech support, instead of calling the LD number (and wait ~1 hour).
Gyula
Received on Thu Jul 03 1997 - 17:01:23 NZST