SUMMARY: FUJITSU M2266SA on SPARCstation 2 problems.

From: RJ White (white@silver.DL.EMBL-Heidelberg.DE)
Date: Mon May 10 1993 - 10:08:46 CDT


In article <1993May7.143557.83920@embl-heidelberg.de> I wrote:
        I am having weird disk problems with a system I inherited.
        
        I have a expansion box with 2 disks, one of which is a FUJITSU M2266SA,
        connected to a Sun SPARCstation 2, running 4.1.1....

The problem with my disk is now solved, thanx to many people.
The quick answer (for me) was :

        From: csmoko@relay.nswc.navy.mil (Chuck Smoko - K31)

        I had a similar problem with a Fuji 2266SA and found from others on the
        net that there is a firmware bug in the read-ahead cache on the 226X
        SCSI drive series.

        The is 2 solutions.

        1. Upgrade firmware.
        2. Disable the read-ahead cache. By removing the jumper between pins 5
           and 6 on CN9 (The row of jumpers w/ the SCSI ID).

I tried #2 and its works! thanx!! -rj

The following other replies may be of use to others.
I didn't include all the replies and removed alot to keep this as short
as possible. I'd like to thank the following for the very helpful info:

        Thomas Bastian <bastian@EMBL-Heidelberg.DE>
        curt@ecn.purdue.edu (Curt Freeland)
        ivan@stat.ph.albany.edu (Ivan Auger)
        Larry Weissman 5-2011 <larryw@nsr.bioeng.washington.edu>
        wdc@emx.cc.utexas.edu (William Cochran)
        parker@mprgate.mpr.ca (Ross Parker)
        jwang@houston.sgp.slb.com (John I Wang)
        John DiMarco (jdd@cdf.toronto.edu)
        eap@ora.com (Eric Pearce)
        csmoko@relay.nswc.navy.mil (Chuck Smoko - K31)

---------------- ---------------- ---------------- ----------------
From: curt@ecn.purdue.edu (Curt Freeland)

We have about 60 of these drives in use on just about every model system
Sun produces. The only times I have seen this type of errors were:
1) Early 2266 drives had a firmware problem. I contacted Fujitsu, and they
   sent me new firmware.
2) When we had cable problems. I know you moved the entire case, and did not
   see the errors, but it may be that the Sun driver/interface is more prone
   to see these problems than others (Sun does like to live onthe edge...).
   To test the cable theory, swap this drive with one of the others in the
   same case, or replace the internal cable alltogether. Also check the power
   to the "bad slot" to see if the power supply is noisy.

   As for format not finding problems, do not be surprised. I dont think format
   could find a head crash if you wanted it to. The horror stories I could
   tell you would most likely scare you off of format for life!
---------------- ---------------- ---------------- ----------------
From: ivan@stat.ph.albany.edu (Ivan Auger)

Sunos 4.1.1 has trouble with drives greater than 1.07 Gb. One solution
is to format the drive with 1648 cyls. Or you could upgrade to 4.1.2
or 4.1.3...
---------------- ---------------- ---------------- ----------------
From: Larry Weissman 5-2011 <larryw@nsr.bioeng.washington.edu>

Don't try to increase the number of cylinders under SunOS 4.1.1 until
you have installed the 1GB disk patch.

While the disk does indeed have 1.05GB capacity, SunOS versions up to 4.1.1
could not handle capacity above 1GB. Install the patch first (or move to
4.1.2 or 4.1.3) before trying to get the extra 5% of the capacity.
---------------- ---------------- ---------------- ----------------

From: wdc@emx.cc.utexas.edu (William Cochran)

Here is something that was posted a while ago, which may help
cure your problem.

======================================================================
From: parker@mprgate.mpr.ca (Ross Parker)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Subject: SUMMARY: Fujitsu 1.2Gb disk on Sun (and DEC)
Message-ID: <1991May10.185941.15083@mprgate.mpr.ca>

In an attempt to stem the flood of responses to my query
(*not* that I'm complaining!!! :-) I'm summarizing what
I've found out about 1.2Gb disks and Sun (and DEC) systems.

First - There's a firmware bug on the Fujitsu M2266 drive
that makes it imperitive to disable the drive's read-ahead
cache (jumper 5-6 on bank CN3/CN9). Fujitsu is apparantly
distributing upgraded proms (to their distributors... contact
the vendor you bought the drive from) that fix the problem.
This problem is only apparant on Sun systems, and causes a
large number of read errors on the drive.

Second - There's a problem with the M2266 being on a SCSI bus
with other devices. We've found that if the drive is on a
bus with tape drives (either 1/4" or exabyte), the drive must
be first on the bus. This might be linked to termination in
some way, though others have had the same problem.

Third - When the drive is formatted, parameters must be
carefully chosen to keep the addressing within SCSI-1 limits.
For the M2266, this means formatting with 1642 data cylinders,
2 alternates, 15 heads, 85 sectors/track. This is 16 cylinders
short of the full disk capacity. We did have this information
direct from Fujitsu when we installed the disk initially.
This limitation works fine on a Sun. Apparantly, however,
DEC systems wrap around when they reach high sector addresses,
and scribble on the beginning of the disk. This happened to
us last week (with a different M2266 drive) on a DECstation
5000 - we'd attributed it to another cause, but it caused us
some grief.

Apparantly, DEC will extend their addressing with Ultrix 4.2,
and I've heard rumours from Sun tech support that there's a
patch available for SunOS that allows the same support in
SunOS 4.1.1.

Also, contrary to what some people have reported, the drive
*does* work fine in synchronous mode on a SPARCstation 2 (and
on a 1+ as well). The problem some people have seen with
synchronous mode might be related to the SCSI bus ordering
(the second point above).

---------------- ---------------- ---------------- ----------------
From: jwang@houston.sgp.slb.com (John I Wang)

# From nir@ca44.zoran.hellnet.org
#
# I couldn't find a Fujitsu 2266SA 1.2GB entry in your format.faq.
# I recently installed such a disk, and tried some entries sugested both from
# my dealer, and from The Net.
#
# The best results I got was by using:

disk_type = "Fujitsu M2266SA 1.2GB" \
        : ctlr = MD21 : fmt_time = 4 \
        : trks_zone = 15 : asect = 1 : atrks = 10 \
        : ncyl = 1652 : acyl = 2 : pcyl = 1658 : nhead = 15 : nsect = 85 \
        : rpm = 3600 : bpt = 50830

# From: John DiMarco (jdd@cdf.toronto.edu)
#
# Yes, this is a duplicate entry. If you're running SunOS 4.1.1 or earlier
# on a sun4c (Sparcstation SLC/ELC/1/1+/IPC/IPX/2 without the patch for
# large SCSI disks, problems arise for SCSI disks with a formatted capacity
# greater than 2^21-1 bytes (1GB). Since the Fujitsu 2266 is pretty
# close to that anyways, here's a format entry for the 2266 that stays
# within the limit. Parameters courtesy of Ian Watt from Fujitsu Canada

disk_type = "Fujitsu M2266SA 1GB" \
        : ctlr = MD21 : fmt_time = 4 \
        : ncyl = 1642 : acyl = 2 : pcyl = 1658 : nhead = 15 : nsect = 85 \
        : rpm = 3600 : bpt = 50910

---------------- ---------------- ---------------- ----------------

From: eap@ora.com (Eric Pearce)

Apply Sun patch 100343-02 to fix format on disks with more than
2^21-1 sectors and use this entry:

disk_type = "Fujitsu M2266SA" \
        : ctlr = MD21 : fmt_time = 2 \
        : cache = 0x11 : trks_zone = 15 : asect = 3 \
        : ncyl = 1656 : acyl = 2 : pcyl = 1658 : nhead = 15 : nsect = 84 \
        : rpm = 3600 : bpt = 46635

partition = "Fujitsu M2266SA" \
        : disk = "Fujitsu M2266SA" : ctlr = MD21 \
        : c = 0,2086560 :



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