3 Jan
2002
3 Jan
'02
7:12 a.m.
On Jan 3, 8:53, Ethan Dicks wrote:
Personally, I plan to pick something that is _not_ a
drop-in replacement
for a DEC drive - I can format all sorts of stuff on an RQDX3, but it's
nice to stick to the right models when you can to make drive geometry
tables in the OS and/or drivers match.
Sensible idea. And RQDX1/RQDX2 need the "right" drives; they do bizarre
tests to see what they have connected (like stepping to illegal tracks) and
won't work unless the drive matches something hardcoded into the RQDX
"microcode".
Have you formatted this drive on another controller
and scanned for
bad blocks? I know the RQDX3 has a "standard" way of handling them
(well... standard for the RQDX line), so I'm not sure there's a
"factory BBL" to reference
Not on MFM/ST412-type drives, no.
or if there is, that the DQ614 does reference
it, but I would see if the drive passes a low-level format on something
else, perhaps a WD1003 in an old 486 that still has the format option
in the BIOS menu. You could also try it on a WX-1 with its BIOS
formatter (accessed through debug, typically).
The DQ614P program should include several controller and drive exercises
and tests, and a bad block (actually a bad track) utility.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York