🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1267@lzsc.ATT.COM> hcj@lzsc.ATT.COM (HC Johnson) writes:
>In article <5586@blake.acs.washington.edu>, ramsiri@blake.acs.washington.edu (Enartloc Nhoj) writes:
>> I thought i'd pass on my experience with Supra v3.37 and GCR.
>> 
>> Upon getting GCR about 2 weeks ago, i reformatted my Quantum 80S
>
>Here are some "gotchas".
>
>First, as far a SUPRA and Spectre are concerned, there are 12 partitions
>on a disk.  All of the information is kept in sector 0.  It sounds as
>if you have corruption in some of the areas.
>Use suputl.prg to set to 0 the partitions that done exist.
>I have noticed that some garbage values prevent suputl from doing this.
>Then use supedit.prg to (CAREFULLY) set the partitions to 0.
>
>Second. there are two kinds of disk drives.  SCSI drives take care of
>defective areas automatically.  All other drives require that the formatter
>handle the problem.  Most (all?) SUPRA controllers contain an Adaptec
>4000 (MFM) or 4070 (RLL) controller.  
>Adaptec controllers EXPECT to be told the defect list for the disk.
>Adaptec then makes these sectors disappear; they are not numbered or accessable.
>Howard C. Johnson
>ATT Bell Labs
>=====NEW address====



Thanks for responding.
The denoument:

Briefly,


	When i got GCR, i went into Supra to low-level format
my Quantum 80S (84MB drive).  Starting from C:\, i worked my way
down like so:  9MB, 9MB, 6MB, 15MB, 4.5MB, 10MB, and when i did
CALCULATE, the window showed 30.19 .. so i set my SEVENTH
partition to 30.19.. did CALCULATE and got EXCESS is 0.00.
Partition I:\ was 30.19, Supra gave me a *WARNING* that this
partition could not be used for GEMDOS... i clicked on CONTINUE..
i formatted the drive.. all 164,000+ sectors with 0 BAD SECTORS
(the Quantum has a built-in SCSI).. I then went into Spectre and
proceeded to format the last 3 partitions (G:\ H:\ and I:\) to
MAC HFS format.. it was in SPectre that i noticed two more partitions
of 12MB and 6MB respectively.  The Spectre format utility shows
the type and size of each partition.. all the sizes looked accurate
.. including the 30MB partition number 7.  For experiment, i decided
to format partitions G-I PLUS the "new" partitions at the end for
HFS mac mode...  i wanted to see if i could write to the new partitions.
Spectre formatted them in seconds.. i then booted up into mac mode
and opened up all 5 windows.. checked sizes and so on... they
all looked correct...  i then started loading a bunch of PD stuff
and so on onto the outer last two partitions..  reading and writing
to them was perfectly flawless.. i then wrote to the 30MB and all
was well there too....  it wasn't until i tried to really
load up the 30MB that i found that it couldn't take more than
12MB... i finally realized that these partitions were the sizes
i had BEFORE getting GCR....

I went back into Supra and discovered what had really happened.
I don't think this is a case of user idocy.. others may in fact
think so...:

I examined the partition sizes in the format window... 
everything checked out fine.. but then i noticed beyond the
30MB partition.. i had to scroll the windo there.. were the
two partitions J:\12MB and K:\6MB  ..!  now.. this was obviously
the problem...   My question is: why when i originally set the
partition sizes did those two still exist even after the 30.19
meg set the excess to 0.00?  Seem like Supra should have realized
the numbers added up to over 100MB for an 80MB controller..
Never was there a warning.. also.. becasue the windo only shows
4 partitions at a time.. those last ones were not visible as
i set my "last" one to 30.19.   I must not have seen the grayed
scroll bar... nonetheless, this doesn't justify the formatting
routine to continue with "apparent" success...!  Not only that,
Supra did NOT format the 30MB partition, instead, it defaulted
to the original 12MB... and then formatted the ones that shouldn't
have been there....  what was strange, of course, is that
the formatting utility window showed 30MB still... even though
we all know there was only 12MB in there.....  NOt only that..
i went so far as to use these partitions under the MAC OS..

anyway...  when i look back at it... the formatting should never
have proceeded...  also.. i think that when someone resets the
partition sizes and begins at C:\
  works the way down until EXCESS = 0.00  .. doesn't seem like
there should be any partitions lurking under some scroll
bar....  

-kevin
ramsiri@blake.acs.washington.edu 

BTW:  it would have been a more interesting problem if 
      what Howard thought were actually true.. at least my
      aggravation would have been worth something...