SUMMARY: Problems with Wren IV and Sun OS 4.1.1

From: Peter Kaldis (peter@grafnetix.qc.ca)
Date: Wed Aug 21 1991 - 16:35:21 CDT


First of all my apologies for being so late in summarizing; a much needed
vacation, and alot of piled up work got in the way.

Second, my original question:

> Recently we upgraded our system from SunOS 4.1 to SunOS 4.1.1. Since this
> time we cannot et the system to use the Wren IV - sd3. It generates
> errors such as "fatal media error on block 1835008 (4432/3/22)"
>
> This value is way out of range considering that the #cyl= 1545 according
> to the format.dat entry for this drive. Also This drive has been working
> fine for over a year under OS 4.1.
>
> I've tried reformatting the drive under 4.1.1 but I get the same error
> and format aborts. Any ideas why this is happening. Here's what my partition
> table looks like:

Well it turns out that the problem was a combination of several factors. The drive was actually a 327, and not a 344 as I originally thought. Since I was
not the one who installed it, I just went along with what was already there
(never assume ....). Several people pointed out to me in their replies that
Sun originally sold these with 386i's at a 327 Megabyte size. This led me to
a hunch and I tried the entry in the format.dat file for a "SUN0327" disk.

This solved the problem format was having and I managed to get the drive
formatted/newfsd/mounted. However quite soon after this I started getting
alot of write errors coming from the disk and it started making a BAD noise
whenever it was accessed. Time to call in for a replacement....

Well the disk was swapped and everything is peachy once again. I'm still
curious however as to why the "Wren IV" entry worked for so long, and what
exactly is so special about block 1835008, since others with different drives
experienced the same error message.

My thanks to everyone who took the time to reply ( I now know more about
Wrens than I ever did ). There was quite alot of generally useful info about
disks and formatting, so if anyone is interested drop me a line and I'll
send you the summaries.

Regards,

- Peter -
=========================================================================
Peter Kaldis Grafnetix Systems Inc.
Tel: (514) 861-3389
Fax: (514) 866-6206 777 de la Commune, Ouest
                                                Suite 101
New: peter@Grafnetix.QC.CA Montreal, Qc
Old: peter%grafnet@larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu CANADA H3N 1Y1
=========================================================================



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