🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3006@gryphon.CTS.COM> jdm@gryphon.CTS.COM (John Mesiavech) writes:
>
>     A Question for the Net:
> 
>     At the computer store where I now work, we are trying to put a system
>together for a customer.  This system includes a Bridgeboard, HardCard
>on the IBM side, an A2090 on the Amiga side, extra drive, and an external
>SCSI drive on the A2090.  We are trying to use a Hyperdrive, which is
>a Macintosh SE SCSI-compatable external hard drive that uses a 
>Seagate ST251N drive internally.  We have the Hyperdrive set as 
>SCSI device one, and we have out Mountlists set with the Unit parameter
>= 3, which according to the manual references the first device on the
>external Mac SCSI bus.  When we try to PREP the drive, the Amiga locks
>up solidly, and the drive sits idle.  The drive is correctly terminated,
>and the drive itself is tested and known to work on a Macintosh.
>The DB-25 connector on the back of the A2090 is supposed to be MAC
>SCSI compatable, so does anyone out there know what's going wrong?
> 


I am using an ST251N drive internal to the A2000.  I have not had PREP hang
up but have had some other problems which I can relate which may (or may not)
help you.

As far as I can tell the drive physically has:
                 4  heads
                26  sectors per track
               818  cylinders

You would normally expect a drive of this conformation to have 104 sectors
per cylinder.  However if you divide the sectors per drive, 84254, by the
number of cylinders, 818, you get 103, one less than you would expect.
So when I indicated in the mountList that it had 4 heads and 26 sectors per
track and 818 cylinders the format would hang around cylinder 811 or so
because it was really addressing off the end of the drive.

To get the most efficient use of the drive I tell the software the drive
has:
                   4  heads
                  17  sectors per track
                1239  cylinders

This factors out to 84252 sectors which is only 2 short of the 84254 sectors
per drive it is specified to have.

The other problem I had was that I could never create a second partition on
the drive.  Whenever I tried to format the second partition I would get
a GURU.  I triple checked that the mountlist entries and entries to PREP
did not have any overlaping cylinders but with no success.  Luckally I did
not really want to setup secondary partitions any way so I just left it with
one 40M partion and have had no other problems except....

I did have a problem trying to use a non protected version of DPaint II on
the hard disk.  Whenever I tried to load non- lo-res pictures from the hard
disk I would get a system requestor indicating that the volume got a read/
write error.  Now this is the only time I have gotten any read/write errors
from the hard disk and tried loading DPaint and the picture drawers at
different stages of filling the hard disk and had the same problem.  I have
convinced myself that it is a problem in the way that DPaint is accessing
the drive.  Anyone else had this problem?

                          Good luck and thanks,  Matthew.