From owner-freebsd-hardware Mon Oct 6 01:58:14 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id BAA15407 for hardware-outgoing; Mon, 6 Oct 1997 01:58:14 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hardware) Received: from word.smith.net.au (word.smith.net.au [202.0.75.3]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id BAA15399 for ; Mon, 6 Oct 1997 01:58:05 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mike@word.smith.net.au) Received: from word.smith.net.au (localhost.smith.net.au [127.0.0.1]) by word.smith.net.au (8.8.7/8.8.5) with ESMTP id SAA01131; Mon, 6 Oct 1997 18:24:36 +0930 (CST) Message-Id: <199710060854.SAA01131@word.smith.net.au> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0zeta 7/24/97 To: Nate Williams cc: hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Strange error message In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 06 Oct 1997 00:47:54 CST." <199710060647.AAA28851@rocky.mt.sri.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Mon, 06 Oct 1997 18:24:35 +0930 From: Mike Smith Sender: owner-freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > I haven't booted up my second disk in a long time in my laptop, and now > I get this error: > > wd0: interrupt timeout: > wd0: status 50 error 0 > wd0: interrupt timeout: > wd0: status 50 error 1 The interrupt timeout suggests that either the drive electronics have died, or that you have a connector problem; have you tried removing and replugging it? > Unfortunately, it's on my root partition, so 'dd' doesn't even work. > Unfortunately, the disk is 'unclean', so I can't even mount it > read-write to go find the offended disk block. I suspectk it's trying > to read some block on my disk that went bad, but the error recovery is > such that once it starts to read it, it can't get past it. Is there > something I can do to recover, or is it time to get a new disk (I don't > even know if I can buy one for a machine this old)? I haven't noticed > anything wrong on the DOS side of the disk, but it just might not have > any bad-spots on that part of the disk. The error above doesn't really indicate a bad sector. It's odd though that the disk works under DOS, unless DOS doesn't use the interrupt for the disk but instead polls for status. It's possible that the error is such that the firmware on the drive crashes trying to deal with it, and this is the cause of the disk "cycling" as you describe it. > Thanks for any help you can provide! I'm mildly puzzled that the disk works at all in any other situation. What sort of disk is it? You say "second" above; do you have another identical unit? If you do, a board swap between the two would be an interesting exercise. mike