Re: Fluke 9100 hard disk write errors

From: andy <warlords_at_punkass.com>
Date: Tue Jan 02 2007 - 13:28:08 EST

> Not a good sign. Bad drive or SCSI->MFM adaptor. The error reporting
> being turned on is key, the format utility itself ignores most other
> errors except a bad sector 0.

okey doke.

> Those Miniscribe drives are lucky they spin up at all anymore. Most
> likely its the drive. I have a pile of bad MFM drives from 9100's -
> the Seagates all suffer from stiction, the Miniscribes media starts
> failing (or the platter motor can't maintain accurate speed anymore)...

I believe my 9100 was NOS when i got it in 1998? i used it on an almost
daily basis from 2000 to 2005 i would say, then it went into storage for a
year, when i got it out of storage, the hard disk wouldn't spin up, after
moving the rotator arm i got it going again and its been fine up until now
(so its done a few months work now) and then i fudged it up by doing the
system upgrade heh.

All in all, i've defo had my moneys worth, and can't really fault the drive
:)

> SInce you've already upgraded to the version 5.0 ROMs, get a used SCSI
> drive off eBay and replace it. Plugs right into the SCSI controller you
> already have, just remove the SCSI->MFM adaptor mounted on the drive
> cage. Much simpler design and one fewer point of failure.

So i decided to do just this, looked on ebay, only thing i thought of that i
would find a small scsi drive in was an old mac... sure enough i won a mac
SE on ebay and went to go get it from south london on the train heh. I
thought it might have a 40 or an 80 meg drive, sadly it has the stock
components, 1mb ram (256k simms) and a 20meg scsi hard drive... and when i
booted it up, it sounds suspiciously like the fluke......

> Note that if you plan on using the Editor (with a keyboard/monitor)
> you'll need to stick below somewhere around a 400MB drive. Theres a
> rollover bug where the free-space calculation is not accurate with
> larger disks. I believe the largest drive I have in any of my 9100's
> from Fluke is 320MB. I usually try and get one of the 1/2" height
> Quantums (like a LPS series), eBay usually has a selection of cheap
> pulls from old Macs.

so, on cracking open the mac, what should lay before me, but a Miniscribe
8425S hahaha the scsi version of the mfm that died...

still, it works, and i'm willing to give it a go... pulled from a fully
working mac remember...

but the problem now is that i can't seem to format it from the service disk,
which format option should be used to format it? old setup was western
digital/miniscribe 8425... options are :
- western digital / miniscribe 8425
- western digital / tandon tm362
- adaptec 4000 / miniscribe 8425
- adaptec 5000 / miniscribe 8425
- rodime 6052 with disconnect
- rodime 6052 without disconnect
- rodime ro3057s

after choosing to format under any of these configs, I get a further option
of formatting with dma or without dma, which option should be selected?

i've tried a few combos and everything so far is giving me errors one way or
the other.. i would assume that adaptec 8425 would be about right, but
nothing works so far.. unfortunately none of the errors stay on the display
long enough for me to read them/write them down, stupid software.

anyone have an idea of which is the right combo to try? cos if that doesn't
work then maybe something else is up?

also, might i be missing something on the scsi ID setting, would this cause
these sorts of problems? it came from the mac, so would assume id:0 .. is
this what the old mfm controller tells the scsi interface that its plugged
into? or is it another id?

thanks in advance

Andy

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Received on Tue Jan 2 13:28:54 2007

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