[Techtoolslist] Fluke 9100 hard disk write errors

[andy]

> 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