SUMMARY: 128MB magneto optical drive - help!!!

From: CAMPANI@genova.infn.it
Date: Thu Mar 30 1995 - 00:18:38 CST


SUMMARY: 128MB magneto optical drive - help!!!

The original question:

> Hi, my boss recently bought a Ricoh 128MB MO SCSI drive,
> to perform mass storage both on an MSDOS PC and his SUN
> workstation (SS10/512). When working with the PC all goes
> well while, on the SS10, it is impossible to get any
> answer from the drive except at prom level (with probe-scsi).
> Any hint from the net????
>
> Thanks in advance (summary of all answers will be available)
>
> Marco Campani

First of all, sorry for forgetting to put useful info about the OS version
I actually use (Both SunOS4.1.4 and Solaris2.4). Basically, answers range
from "You need a driver" to "You don't need a driver - SunOS will do it for
you!".

The first problem to solve is to make the kernel recognize drive at boot
time - what you need to do is to make the device to answer the SCSI inquiry
with type <Disk>. My MO drive answer with "Removable device" (which is not
handled by sd driver); by changing one dip switch on the drive board (I have
no schematic, so I tried different configurations with probe-scsi) I changed
this answer to "Removable disk". Then, starting from SunOS4.1.2, the sd driver
is able to recognize it at boot time (Solaris 2.x will need to boot with the
option -r to reconfigure the kernel for new device drivers). [Note that you
need to put your disk at SCSI address between 0 and 3, first 4 SCSI drives].

Now, depending on your use of the media, you have to do:

Unix (4.2) partitions: (tested - it works)

        prepare an entry in format.dat to perform formatting, labelling
        and creating filesystems on this disk.

        1) Formatting (not really useful ... i see that all media
           available here for 128MO drives are pre-formatted).
        2) Labelling: really important to create filesystems and to
           make sd driver recognize disk geometry at boot; i created
           a new entry in format.dat like this

        disk_type = "RICOH-RO3012E" \
           : ctlr = SCSI : fmt_time = 7 \
           : ncyl = 9950 : acyl = 2 : pcyl = 9955 : nhead = 1 : nsect = 25 \
           : rpm = 3600 : bpt = 12800
        partition = "RICOH-RO3012E" \
           : disk = "RICOH-RO3012E" : ctlr = SCSI \
           : a = 0, 0 : b = 0, 0 : c = 0, 248750 : g = 0, 248750

        to use the whole disk as one "big" partition. (For Solaris2 users!
        replace letters in partition definition with numbers: a->0, b->1, ..)

        3) Creating filesystems: newfs /dev/sd?g will do the rest of the
           task. You can then mount the disk and access it as a normal
           SCSI-disk (except for access time).

MsDos (pcfs) partitions: (suggested by Tom Kinter <tmk@us0.mayo.edu>)
                         (not already tested)

> I have had some luck reading PC MSDOS opticals on a Sony MO
> drive by using the "mtools" package.
> (ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/mtools-2.0.7.tar.gz).
> I had to create a new device in "devices.c":
>
> #ifdef SPARC
> /*
> * A: floppy
> * B: smo-optical
> *
> */
> {'A', "/dev/rfd0c", 0L, 12, 0, (int(*)()) 0, 80, 2, 18},
> {'A', "/dev/rfd0c", 0L, 12, 0, (int(*)()) 0, 80, 2, 9},
>
> --> {'B', "/dev/rsmo0c", 0L, 16, 0, (int(*)()) 0, 0, 0, 0}, <--
>
> {'\0', (char *)NULL, 0L, 0, 0, (int(*)()) 0, 0, 0, 0}
> };
> #endif /* SPARC */
>
> Then I could use such tools as "mdir" to get a listing of the
> disk or "mcopy" to get files from the disk.

                                                Thanks to all
                                                that answered!

                                                Marco Campani

If someone wants the long summary containing all answer mail me a request
and I'll send it immediately.



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