Hi!
This is the continuing story about a SCSI newbie trying to get his
harddisk working...
It's a long detailed story, but please read it, and help me! Maybe we
all can learn from this, and maybe I can finally make a SCSI FAQ!
Yesterday, I borrowed a SCSI cable from a friend, _with_ a terminator at
the end. So, I connected the cable to my IBM 160MB SCSI-2 harddrive. I
turn on the power of the HD and the MSX, and... No "SCSI Bus is down,
..." error! But what happens then:
I get: Please wait --' (and it's not chaning into ---!). Hmm... After a
few minutes of waiting I reset the computer. When pressing DEL for
setup, I also get Wait... and then nothing.
I tried my 20MB Miniscribe SCSI-1 drive to test. It seems to work, but I
get a "harddisk offline" error... (At this moment I didn't know it was
due to ID settings).
Totally being newbie, I try the IBM again, but now I remove the
terminator... AND WHAT HAPPENS!? It doesn't hang anymore! But I get a
"harddisk offline" error again. Then I tried the Miniscribe again, also
"harddisk offline" (so the Miniscribe doesn't care about terminators?).
I again connect the IBM, and try to hit DEL... Now I see that the
harddisk is offline (in the setup menu), but that "Units online: 1"! So,
I try NFDISK 1.2. I see then that Target ID = 1 and Host ID = 7. Hey!
Next, I make a partition table with NFDISK and write it to the HD... I
get OK. I reset the MSX, and hit DEL. I set Target ID and Host ID to
resp. 1 and 7. I now see "Harddisk: ok". I Save and Quit and then:
Please Wait --'/---! It's searching! And then it finds the harddisk! I
get into BASIC. I type Files, hear the HD spin, and get "File not
Found". Seems to be ok! But I set 5 partitions on the harddisk, so I try
'Files "B:"', but the diskdrive starts running... Hmm, seems that I have
only one partition... I try to copy MSX-DOS to the partition (drive A).
I get: "Disk write protected"... Hmm...
After some more experimenting, I get no further. Then I discover the
option "P" in NFDISK 1.2. I change the partition type from "Extended" to
"MSX (old)". Now I have indeed 5 partitions, all write enabled! YES!
I copy some things and stuff, and try some programs. I try HDSPEED (by
Nuthemagic, that's you Kasper?), and get some Data Errors... Hmm... Then
I try SCANDISK by usch (Uwe Schroeder). It finds 22 bad sectors on the
A-partition. Shit. I thought, maybe it helps if I reformat the A-drive.
So I try FORMAT... I get: "Drive (A, B, C, D, E, F, G)?" COol! I type
"A". I get "1 - Write protected partition // 2 - Write enabled
partition" (or something similar). I type "2", and then get "*** Not a
DOS disk"... Hmm... So that doesn't work.
Then I just copied some stuff from diskette to drive, and indeed, I
sometimes get "Disk I/O error" e.g. But when I retry, I don't get the
error again...
But later I found a program called HDCHECK (by David Boelee). This reads
and writes every sector on a partition and marks it BAD in the FAT when
an error occurs. I ran it, and after 1.3 hours it reports to have found
2F bad sectors (47?). Hmmm, more than SCANDISK... But ok, I guess the
A-partition is ok now... (after running CHKDSK, to correct the missing
sector stuff. CHKDSK reports 336k in BAD sectors now, out of the 32MB of
diskspace on the A-partition). I'll have to do the other partitions as
well I guess. By the way, the MiniScribe has no bad sectors, according
to SCANDISK (didn't try HDCHECK yet).
There were also some partitions which gave no errors with HDSPEED. Then
I got a speed of 98 kB/s. On the Miniscribe I got 48 kB/s (all on a Sony
HB-F700D, 3.5MHz, Novaxis 1.00).
So, now I'd like some explanations and answers, please! The topics:
1 - Why isn't the terminator needed after all? Did I have a bad cable
before? (When I got the "SCSI Bus is down // Host self test
failed"-error)
2 - Why doesn't the extended partitiontable work? (Because I have
Novaxis 1.00 ROM?)
3 - If I upgrade to Novaxis 1.51, can I keep all the partitions, and
all info on the HD? Or do I need to reinstall everything?
4 - What causes the bad sectors, and why does SCANDISK report less bad
sectors than HDCHECK? (Are they random, maybe?) Why only on the much
better IBM drive?
5 - Did I handle the BAD sectors in a good way? Or are there better
methods?
6 - What is the FORMAT command for, since I can't format a partition
with it? (Or is that the task of NFDISK?)
7 - Where can I find a manual of NFDISK?
8 - What is the difference between all those types of partitiontables?
9 - Why are the Disk I/O errors (e.g. in Multi Mente) gone in a retry?
10 - I guess an upgrade of the Novaxis ROM is a good thing. Who can do
it for me, and what would it cost?
11 - Are the speeds I got with HDSPEED reasonable? What is the speed
with a new Novaxis ROM? And what on 7MHz? (Twice as big?) And with both
7MHz and new ROM?
12 (BTW - Is HDSPEED reliable anyway? It only checked 32768 sectors...)
13 - With those bad sectors, marked BAD in the FAT, I guess files will
be saved only on non-BAD sectors. But I guess SCANDISK and HDSPEED will
still encounter errors, since they don't look in the FAT, but just read
the sectors?
Ok, I guess that's it.
Thanks for your attention, and please send me some answers/explanations!
More info or other suggestions/comments/tips in relation to this story
are very welcome!
Grtjs, Manuel
PS: MSX 4 EVER! (Questions? See: http://www.faq.msxnet.org)
PPS: Visit my homepage at http://www.sci.kun.nl/marie/home/manuelbi
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