🚀 go-pugleaf

This is a note from an MIT astronomy grad student on some Sony
magneto-optical disk problems.  Please contact him directly if you have
any questions; I'm not at all familiar with these devices.

forwarded message below ---------------------------------
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 90 15:00:00 -0500
From: Joe Harrington <jh@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>
To: Michel.Fingerhut@ircam.fr, jtkohl@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Joe Harrington's message of Mon, 19 Nov 90 16:41:45 -0500 <9011192141.AA07869@SOL.MIT.EDU>
Subject: sony magneto-opticals
Cc: jh@MIT.EDU, rfrench%kepler.wellesley.edu@relay.cs.net, ccount@JADE.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: jh@MIT.EDU

This is for general distribution.  Could someone please post it to
whatever newsgroup Michel's question came from?

Bill Dallas, an engineer working with DEC's CSS group, has tracked
down a bug in the scsi.c file on risc Ultrix.  This bug caused a
system crash when reading Sony SMO-D500 Magneto-Optical disks with bad
disk blocks.  A patch to risc Ultrix 4.1 will be available through
regular software service channels in a week or two; I do not know if
they will do a retrofit to risc Ultrix 4.0.  I have found that disks
which formerly crashed the machine no longer do so, though they may
give I/O errors when the bad blocks are encountered.  Bill Dallas will
soon have a manual for the drive that will let him put in the full
support for this disk as a "real" supported third-party device (like
the Exabyte, for example), including locking the drive when a disk is
mounted (to keep people from ejecting mounted disks), bad block
forwarding, and eliminating the insidious necessity to open the device
read-only before any other disk operation can be perormed.  A time
scale for this larger project is not yet established.  People who want
to try to do it themselves can get a manual from:

Trimarchi, Inc.
P.O. BOX 560
2139 High Tech Road
State College, PA 16803

(800) 638-8639

I'm interested in any results or any news on this drive; please send
personal email since I am not currently reading netnews.

--jh--

end forwarded message ------------------
--
John Kohl <jtkohl@ATHENA.MIT.EDU> or <jtkohl@MIT.EDU>
Digital Equipment Corporation/Project Athena
(The above opinions are MINE.  Don't put my words in somebody else's mouth!)