NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #18/NN_1992_18.iso/spool/comp/os/minix/4259

Text File | 1992-08-21 | 1.8 KB | 42 lines

Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
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From: [e-mail] (Stephen T. McKenna)
Subject: Re: Amiga MINIX floppy problems
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
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Organization: Amoco Research Center
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Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 03:44:42 GMT
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Just to let you know your problems aren't unique:

I had a bad disk in my original set.  They were quickly replaced (thanks for
that, P-H) but the second set had a bad one too; luckily a different one than
the first set, which I had copied, so I now had a complete set.

Although Minix is running now, it goes through disks at a furious rate.  The
typical situation is sudden unrecoverable read or write errors, frequently in
groups of 5 consecutive blocks.  The transfer command is particularly prone
to corrupting disks this way; when transferring from the Amiga to the Minix
side I usually write a half dozen disks in hope that one will read.

I don't think patches are the answer; I've patched up to 1.5.10.2 and not
seen any improvement, although the patches are worthwhile anyway.  My advice
on muddling by is to keep everything write-protected whenever possible; this
includes /usr at boot and login time (Minix will gripe about the write-protect
when it tries to write /usr/adm/wtmp, but that's harmless).

I have admittedly old hardware (6 year old A1000 with a 68020 add-on) but it
has never had disk drive problems.

Can anyone out there offer explanations or (hopefully) suggestions?

Steve McKenna
[e-mail]
Amoco Research Center
Naperville, IL, USA