SUMMARY: Using Adaptec 5500 + Maxtor XT-1140 on a sun

From: Carson A. Gaspar (carson@cs.columbia.edu)
Date: Wed Feb 24 1993 - 04:39:43 CST


Thanks to:

-Carl (mueller@cs.unc.edu)
art walker ahw@egret0.stanford.edu
James Lewczyk jim.lewczyk.FtCollins.NCR.COM
Jeff Woolsey woolsey@folderol.UUCP -or- woolsey@netcom.COM -or even- woolsey@mri.com
Louis M. Brune louis@andataco.com

As it turns out, the sun is too stupid to format the disks. Maybe
with decent SCSI drivers, but SunOS 4.1.x certainly doesn't have
those out of the box.

The procedure is as follows:

Attach the drive to any machine that can deal with the adaptec (I used
an Amiga with a C Ltd controller).

Reformat the drive.

Attach the drive to the sun.

Format the disk.

According to Maxtor, the XT-1140's geometry is 918 cyl, 15 heads, 17 sectors
This info was gotten by calling 800-2MA-XTOR. They have a nice
voice-mail system that will read you specs for their drives, day or
night. I _like_ that feature!!!

My drives will format up to 972 cyls, but there may be some problems
with that. One repondent reported up to 1140 cyls (makes sense...),
so YMMV.

The Adaptec 5500 jumper info is as follows:

A-B shorted:initiates hard reset upon receipt of SCSI Bus Reset
C-D Reserved
E-F For hardsectored drive on LUN0
G-H For hardsectored drive on LUN1
J-K Reserved
DIAG if shorted, controller will continuously repeat its selftest
Par enable parity check. Parity is alwasy generated
A4 SCSI ID bit 2^2
A2 SCSI ID bit 2^1
A1 SCSI ID bit 2^0

-- 
Carson Gaspar             Arkham in '98, A WorldCon Bid with Real Soul - YOURS!
carson@cs.columbia.edu               Choirmaster of the Rogue Filkers of Arkham



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