🚀 go-pugleaf

From: dynasoft!john@stag.UUCP (John Stanley)

[src@xanth.cs.odu.edu (Scott R. Chilcote) writes...]

> I purchased a Supra Host Adapter/controller, and added an Adaptek 4070 
> SCSI --> RLL controller to it.  For the drive I bought a Seagate ST-277R
> 65 Megabyte hard disk. 

[...]

> The switching supply I
> bought has plenty of power for two drives, and doesn't even get warm running
> one.  I've tested the outputs, though, and it does what it should.

  If you didn't test it -while- the system is reading from the drive for a
number of secconds at a time, you haven't tested it in-use.  Marginal
parts would place more of a load on the system while accessing the drive
and overload the supply...  But, if we assume that you -have- tested it
in-use...:

> BUT, nine times out of ten, when I run ANY program on the hard disk it will
> crash, with between two and seven bombs.  If I enable auto-booting on the hard
> disk, it will perpetually crash with two bombs.  Formatting WITH bad sector   
> mapping enabled will cause the format program to give a "bad field in CDB"
> error before the partitions are installed.  And if I use SUPUTIL to go and 
> map bad sectors later, it gives a "Bad sector in FAT -- Disk unuseable" error.

  What's so misterious?  You probably have a bad drive with a major
concentration of problems in a critical area of the drive.  The remainder
of your message just supports this idea...  The problem is probably in the
head circuit on the drive itself.  If you access a large number of sectors
very-very quickly (as you do at boot time or when running a program) it
can't maintain signal levels high enough to drive the controller...

  One other possibility could be emf from some nearby source.  If your
drive is sitting next to a speaker, tv, or even your ST monitor, try
moving it at least two feet away and trying again.  If that fails, deepsix
the drive and get a good one...

--
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---
John Stanley (dynasoft!john@stag.UUCP)
Software Consultant / Dynasoft Systems