#Syquest again!!!!
21 messages in this thread
Okay, I'm still having problems with my SyQuest…
I have a GVP G-force 030, and a Quantam 40 meg drive attached to the SCSI
port… I also have the Syquest attached… Today, after I swapped disks, I
got a "Syq: has a read/write error" message! Ugh! My other disk said the
same. The only disk that stil works is the original disk I got with the
Syquest. They are all formatted exactly the same using Faaastprep! Yuch!
I wish I'd gotten just a plain old 100 meg hard drive… 🙁 Chris
Chris,
I have a similar setup except I use the Ricoh removables. No problems for
about two years and two upgrades of GVP Roms, so I would suspect the
Cartridges have been damaged or got dirt in them.
wmc
Wayne, Well, GVP has another suggestion. Because it only happens when I
switch cartridges, they suggesst that it may be the fastfilesysstem file.
An older one is about 12k, a newer one is about 20k. I swapped the two,
rewrote my RDB, and so far so good.
I'll keep you all updated – I know you can't wait to hear!
Chris,
Thats right! Now that you mention it I had the same problem when I
upgraded to thier 4.4 ROMS under 1.3. I changed back to the old ROMS until
I got 2.04, copied the 2.04 fastfilesystem to the 1.3 boot partion. Then
when I use the ROM switcher and boot to 1.3 (which, BTW i've done for
curiosity only – not out of need) all worked well.
I'm getting old – I had forgotten all about that until you mentioned it.
BTW, I believe the 22K FFS is on 1.3.3 release.
wmc
Wayne,
So which FFS file is the one you should use? the 22K one???
.. Tim Trompeter…
Yes, the 22k one.
wmc
Wayne, Well, the new FFS also came on the GVP disk. So I copied it over…
Which explains why my hard disk was working well and my Syquest wasn't. I
had formatted the hard disk with the GVP floppy… Had new FFS on it…!
Chris
Wayne,
I've got a Ricoh removeable drive that just went back to GVP after almost a
year of good use. All of a sudden it had started to trash cartridges.
After returning the second cartridge back to GVP because the tech insisted
that it must be the cartridge, since the AMAX cart I use seemed to be
working just fine, the AMAX cart got chomped!
Symptoms were progressive. First, ok formatting a new disk, but within 2
days started seeing R/W errors–I think 2 days after I formatted one disk
there were 7 errors; on about the 5th day there were more than 1000,
according to QB tools. It ran out of "spare blocks" to remap from the bad
sectors (but I suspect that the carts are probably ok)
FastPrep failed to do a low level format with a mysterious Sense Key 3
Error 45 or something like that, no one at GVP knew what that might mean.
Anyway, the drive went back today. I suspect something went wrong with the
drive head positioning, but the whole process has made me real timid about
using the drive for much. Guess I'll wait and see what GVP has to say
about the problem.
After the 3rd call, one of the techs told me that in order to use the
removable media drives you need version 4.0 of the ROMs (it's actually
v3.15…don't ask me why). The first 2 techs I talked to said there was no
need to upgrade the ROM (i had v 3.12 on a rev 3 Combo card). Anyway,
upgrading the ROM didn't help matters any.
.. Tim Trompeter…
Tim,
Humm….A Sense Key 3 error is a "media" error, if the additional
data was 45, that means select/reselect failed.
I'm a bit surprised the GVP techs didn't know this.
Don
Don,
*None* of the techs at GVP knew that the sense key was all about. I was
suprised because I'm sure that the list of errors is readily available to
their tech support–especially with their SCSI interface and drive bundles.
Anyway, i hope they'll be able to fix the drive 🙁
.. Tim Trompeter…
Tim,
With 4.x ROMS be sure you are using the 22K version of the FastFile system
and manually Faastprep just the RDB on all the carts. When I upgraded to
the 4.4 from the 3.05s I had a little trouble similar (but all at once –
not progressive). I upgraded DOS to 2.04 and copied the 2.04 FFS to my 1.3
boot disk. Now when I operate in either 1.3 or 2.04 all is well.
wmc
Wayne,
Interesting…
The version of FastFileSystem in my L: directory is 22412 bytes. doesn't
look like that's the problem. Actually, the problem appears to be that the
drive doesn't even recognize that there's a disk inserted.
Oh well, got any other suggestions for reliable storage devices? (i'm
getting into the 2nd year of both of my harddrives, and am really hoping
that a couple years more reliable service out of them isn't too much to ask
:^)
.. Tim Trompeter…
Tim,
Are you running ADos 1.3? If I recall, I had the wame problem with the
Ricoh when I had the 4.04 ROM with 1.3 ADos. Then I upgraded to 2.04, just
re-wrot the RDBs with the 1.98 rev of FFS and all was well. I think the
way my problem manifested was that if I booted with a disk inserted in the
RIcoh, it showed up on the screen but gave a bad disk when I tried to
access it. Then if I removed it the disk was not recognized. If I tried
to insert the disk after boot-upinstead, it was not shown on the screen. I
think the issue was the way the tackdisk remove and change interrupt
commands were not quite implemented by CBM but are by GVP in 4.04 ROMS. GVP
claims that their ROMS work anyway, but I found the only combination that
worked is 2.04 and 4.04 roms or 1.3.x and 3.x roms.
wmc
Wayne,
My system setup is the following:
B2000 rev 4.4 motherboard
GVP 33mHz combo card (old ROM=3.12, new one they sent me 4.0 (reads
as 3.15)
combo card is rev 3
2.04 ADOS in ROM KS 37.175, WB 37.67, installed per CBM script
installation.
I used FastPrep v1.98m , apparently the newest one.
At the last hurrah, when i put the disk in and tried to have it "spin up"
(spin me up, scotty?) it would start, then either make a loud persistent
gronking noise, or a short one followed by the rapid flashing of the drive
green light. Nothing on WB. If I tried to access via the Shell, I would
get a system error: no disk in drive dr0:…
c'est la vie
.. Tim Trompeter…
Tim,
That almost sounds like a head crash on your removable. Have you tried
another cartridge?
wmc
Wayne,
Well, today in the UPS box arrived my Ricoh drive, back from GVP! Of
course, there wasn't any explanation of what was wrong or what they had to
do to correct it (but I've already left a message with the tech support
folks to let me know what they did…).
The drive seems to be working just fine now; at least I've tried the AMAX
formatted cartridge that it previously refused to recognize and it worked.
I did notice that several programs I had written to the AMAX cartridge have
mysteriously vanished.
I suspect that there was some problem with the drive head alignment that
GVP corrected. The next step is to try to format my (now 4th) new
cartridge and see if it will hold data.
I hope that this isn't a forewarning that there'll be a recurrence of
similar problems in the next few months…!
Anyway, I really appreciate your continued thoughts and responses. It
helps so much to have another person's input to these kinds of problems;
especially when I've been over and over the details thinking I've done
everything right…and it still didn't work.
.. Tim Trompeter…
Tim,
I've just been visited by a little bad luck too!. There was a momentary
brown out that apparently happened whil the RIcoh was being accessed. One
block in the RDB is no longer readable/writable and now I can't format or
use that cartridge anymore. Fortunately, QBTools included a PD FIxDisk
utility that was at least able to copy the files off it eventhough there
was no Icon showing, no ADos function recognized its existence and GVP Prep
gives your favorite sense key error!. It won't even take a bad block remap
as it says it is out of spares (total 5 bad blocks on the disk – just one
in the RDB area.)
Seems this may be the Achilles heel of RDB – It was not set up to work with
bad blocks mapped out of the sectors where it normally lives.
wmc
Wayne,
Sorry to hear about your Ricoh problem–I was beginning to think that I was
the only one with any problems with the drive at all…but I don't feel any
better in your company (nothing personal!)
Interesting to hear about the PD FixDisk utility you got with
QBTools–where is it? I have the original disk…is it somewhere on there?
Or did you have to ask them to send it to you after your problems started?
I never found out what went wrong with my drive; GVP just sent me a new
(refurbished?) one for replacement, and it seems to work just fine so far.
Of course, I trust it –NOT– for the present and will be using it just to
copy archived files to it for a while. I'm soon in the market for some
kind of tape backup to occupy the last of my SCSI slots on my expansion bus
instead of the Ricoh method I had planned to use. That's turned out to be
too expensive an option unless the new QB ever gets a reliable compression
algorithm going…
BTW, have you found any great prices on the cartridges? I'd love to pick
up a six-pack if i could find the carts discounted in the less than $100
range. (of course if i find any deals out here i'll let you know too 🙂
.. Tim Trompeter…
If it was really a SyQuest drive, the number and sequence of
flashes would mean something specific and could be looked up in the SyQuest
documentation. Since it's a Ricoh and I don't have any documentation on
it, I can't help you much, but you could call Ricoh…
Tim,
Just having the correct FFS in the L: is not enough. You have to get it to
the RDB with the Faaastprep program. Select manual and write. That will
update the RDB of the displayed devices.
wmc
Wayne,
Tried that too, in addition to finally trying to low level format the disk.
None of the above would work. Faastprep won't write to the sick disk
despite everything i tried.
Thanks for your continued suggestions!
.. Tim Trompeter…