11 Feb
2009
11 Feb
'09
10:16 a.m.
--- On Wed, 2/11/09, John Floren <slawmaster at gmail.com> wrote:
The disk has either 8" or 9" platters; the
original drive (which was
replaced year back) was a Priam so the new one may be the
same or it
might possibly be a CDC.
It's not totally clear whether the problem is in the
drive or the
controller. The drive spins up, but the disk diagnostic
test fails.
The disk diagnostic on the computer, or on the drive? The newer CDC Sabre drives have
built-in diagnostics. If you pop the center panel off the front, it reveals a hex keypad
and an LCD display. Older CDC drives will have an LED hex display and a couple buttons.
(Of course, not all of them have this, it was an option...).
Does the disk come ready, or does the fault light come on after it spins up? Can you bring
the disk online, and hear the heads load?
If you find out what model drive it is, you can get the manual (Bitsavers has a fair
number of CDC manuals), and find the diagnostic commands for it. You should be able to
unhook the drive from the computer, and power just the drive, and run tests right on the
disk. If it seeks OK and spins, then you might have a bad interface board on the drive, or
on the computer, a bad cable, improper termination (ensure the terminator's ground
lead is connected!), or maybe just a corrupt filesystem, or possibly still bad
blocks/tracks/surfaces on the disk. I don't remember if there are any on-disk
read/write tests or not, but you wouldn't want to corrupt the system software anyway.
Can you boot the computer off floppy disk/tape/whatever?
-Ian