OT: Question about SCSI disks for Sun gurus

OK, First of all it has nothing to do with the operating system, the issue of bad blocks on a disk has to due with surface defects. The surface of any given disk has defects, they are mapped out initially by the manufacturer however environmental issues also play into it and change the disk characterisics which is why you always want to format and check any disk surface before you put it into production. 22 bad blocks is insignificant and don't even give it a second thought. What you would want to look for is if you were having on going disk issues and your bad block table was growing significantly over a short period of time which would indicate that you may have a problem brewing and you should take the appropriate safe guards, backup, backup, backup. This is the nature of the beast and you will most likely over time develop additional bad blocks as the drive electronics age and their value changes but again unless it is a significant change and in a short period of time don't worry about it. BTW, I've done this for a living for the past 25 years so I think I know what I'm talking about.

Want an ultra5? Pay shipping and it's yours.

comp.unix.admin is pretty friendly these days, see you there maybe? (the troll we had has been gone for years).

Yep -

I was doing some calculations in integer math faster on an 8080 than that on a

I did my factorial numbers on the 8080. The largest I did was 1000! and it was

Martin

Martin H. Eastburn @ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net TSRA, Life; NRA LOH & Endowment Member, Golden Eagle, Patriot"s Medal. NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder IHMSA and NRA Metallic Silhouette maker & member.

D> According to Greg Menke :

Is there much of a desire for old Sun systems? A local salvage place has those go through once in a while on the way to pieces. Any interest and I'll watch for them. Even some of the BIG ones. Respectfully, Ron Moore

Depends on the generation. The 3500/4500/6500 series is desirable for companies who still have them as prod boxes and need spares. Before that, forget it.

Check ebay, you'd be amazed at the crap people need RIGHT NOW and the prices they gain.

According to Ron Moore :

Where are you located? Shipping can make a difference in how good a price is -- given the prices on eBay and at hamfests.

The ones which I want at the moment are:

2) Ultra-10

Thanks, DoN.

Any Scsi Stack O Disks? A box with a number of hard drives with a SCSI port to cable to a PC?

Ive got one HP "Disk Array" that orignally came with 5 (1 gig) scsi drives that Ive been slowly upgrading to 8's and 20 gig drives.

Gunner

Rule #35 "That which does not kill you, has made a huge tactical error"

I've got one of those (U10) but you're too far away to work out a trade.

PDW

The ecycler I go to sells a pallet of Ultra 10's every month for the last couple years, he can't keep U10's in stock. We don't know what the buyer is doing with them and we're not sure why the the U10's are preferred when U60's are considerably better performers, though I suspect its to do with the U10's IDE, being lots cheaper and easier and no spuds required.

He's just now starting to get in Blade 100/150 in 1's and 2's and the occasional 1000/2000. Next to none U80's or multi-processor Blades are coming in. Still a fair number of U2's and U5's are showing up. The flow of U1's and Sparcstations has nearly stopped, a couple years ago he had quite a few, though fair numbers of sbus cards show up, presumably stashes of spare parts.

Gregm

"R> Is there much of a desire for old Sun systems? A local salvage place has

Hi all,

I ran another lengthy surface analysis today using the "format" program. The option which destroys the data, like Don suggested. The disk crapped out completely, so I have my answer. I got hundreds of write errors and now the disk won't even provide me with its manufacturer and specifications. A bit annoying, but I'm really glad the disk died now rather than once I'd got a load of data on it.

I'm not sure whether to get another 68-pin 36 GB SCSI disk to go in the external case, or a 36 GB drive to put in an internal bay. Problem is, I already have two 9 GB drives in the internal bays, and I'm not sure I want to do a re-install. I've noticed that some of the latest Blastwave packages are slooooooooooooooowwwwwwww compared to the older ones, so I'm reluctant to re-install. However, I just scored a pair of 400 MHz/2MB cache processors on eBay ($60 for a pair, which I thought wasn't bad), so maybe this will give me the speed to cope with the newer versions of the packages.

Dave, what SCSI disks do you have? I'm in England so I'm not sure how much it would cost to post a disk here. I'll have to go to the USPS website and see. Are they 68-pin or 80-pin SCA? Make and model number would tell me all I need to know.

I haven't solved the GNOME problem yet, but it didn't happen today. Unless it happens often I won't worry about it.

Thanks for the help!

Best wishes,

Chris

I was just going to ask if an Ultra-10 is worth repairing. I have one that needs new electrolytics for the CPU power supply. The HD is missing, but it has 1 GB of RAM. I think that a full set of good quality, low ESR 105º C electrolytics will cost me about $20, plus shipping. What size of drives does it support?

by the way, I have a couple of PLI drives and a stack of media (see my web page,

Wisconsin.

Hella-heavy. Find one locally.

All out. I took my last one to work so I could use it there.

I've got a sun disk array, very loud, 7 or so 18G drives I think. VERY heavy and not worth shipping to CA in my opinion.

Ah, so you need a power suppply for a U10 then, that changes things. You can probably get that for what you're talking (20 bux or so). If you need the sun part number drop me an email and I'll check tomorrow for you.

Sounds like good news (the finding it now part). So what does the seller have to say?

I'd put the bigger drive on the external SCSI, copy your partitions over to it after setting up the other drive, make the other drive bootable, init 0 down to the OK prompt, and boot from the new drive to see how it works.

If you need better notes let me know I can write something up.

I know a couple Unix guys over there - or you could ask on maybe comp.unix.admin for a local (to you) source.

No worries, you have my email.

Having used a Sun computer from Sun 3 to Ultras having several with custom monitors I'd love to have some, knew where to get some but have not much place at this time.

Hope to some day.

Mart> Is there much of a desire for old Sun systems? A local salvage place has

How about some of the drives? What is their pin outs?

Gunner

"Aren't cats Libertarian? They just want to be left alone. I think our dog is a Democrat, as he is always looking for a handout" Unknown Usnet Poster

Heh, heh, I'm pretty sure my dog is a liberal - he has no balls. Keyton