Date: Wed, 6 Aug 97 05:08:25 EDT From: crose@mogli.rutgers.edu (Christopher Rose) To: questions@FreeBSD.org Cc: crose@mogli.rutgers.edu Subject: success with Toshiba Tecra 510CDT Message-ID: <9708060908.AA01040@mogli>
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Hi Folks, A while back I had pinged you all about my lack of success installing freebsd or linux on a Toshiba Tecra 510CDT. The main problem was the 2GB disk kept crashing and/or thrashing. Well, it's now official. The disk was defective -- extremely deviously defective. But as it is with deviousness, it eventually catches up with you! Here was the empirical problem: bad sectors kept cropping up AT RANDOM. The interesting part about it was that bad sectors would slowly MIGRATE (now you're bad, now you're not). It was obvious after running the DOS scandisk program twice within about two weeks. The bad cluster (DOS calls them clusters) graphical patterns were COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!!!!! My relatively uninformed guess is that there was a piece of smut riding on the platter(s) and it/they stayed stuck for a while and then moved. Of course, I could be completely wrong and it might be something as mundane as a flakey controller chip (they ride on the disk pack in the Tecra) or as esoteric as an intermittently wobbly head. Regardless, since I've replaced the 2G disk, FreeBSD and Linux NOW WORK! Only thing left for me to figure out is how to use/get pcmcia scsi support! Then I'll be in tape-backup hog heaven! The amount of software on that Walnut Creek cdrom is outrageous. And that ports facility where it will scour the net for software is pretty amazing. So, sorry I can no longer regale you with stories about my cooling down disks with fan and icepack. I've now joined the unix PC crowd (formerly of the Solaris/Unix SUN crowd). It's pitiful, but now I have a PC which runs MUCH faster than my old SparcII and is vastly cheaper than the Ultra. Cheers and g'nite, Chris *********************************************************************** * Christopher Rose * * Associate Professor of * * Electrical and Computer Engineering * * Rutgers University / WINLAB * * 732-445-5250 * * crose@ece.rutgers.edu * * http://winwww.rutgers.edu/pub/about/people/staff/crose/crose.html * ***********************************************************************
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