MicroVAX 3100 disk formatting Issue

[eugeneman42]

So I picked up this MicroVAX 3100 model 10 or model 76. I'm not quite sure how to tell which it is. I put a 9.1GB 50-pin SCSI drive in it (a Fujitsu M2949SYU to be exact). I realize this is larger than the 100MB drive these systems came with, but I figured maybe the extra cylinders would be ignored. I don't know if there's a way to limit the size of the drive in a BIOS setting somewhere? I'm sure that makes no sense.

I started a format using "test 75" yesterday. Now I expected it to take a while, but it's been going for nearly 24 hours. I'm wondering if I've done something wrong or if this drive just ain't going to work in this machine.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

>>> show dev
VMS/VMB ULTRIX ADDR DEVTYP NUMBYTES RM/FX WP DEVNAM REV
------- ------ -------- ------ -------- ----- -- ------ ---
ESA0 SE0 08-00-2B-13-22-C4

...HostID.... A/6 INITR

DKB0 RZ8 B/0/0/00 DISK 514 MB FX M2949S-0150
...HostID.... B/6 INITR


>>> test 75

ScsHDerase



PV_SCS_FMT_CHN (0=SCSIA \ 1=SCSIB) ? 1



PV_SCS_FMT_ID (0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7) ? 0



PV_SCS_FMT_RUsure (1\0) ? 1

PV_SCS_FMTing..................................... ................
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My experience way back as a child was with a VAX 11/750 and then an 11/785. I recently discovered these things called MicroVAX's and VAXStation's and have been trying to put together a VAXCluster with some VT100's that I rescued. I have one fully functional 4000/60 already.

[eugeneman42]

I found a 520MB Fujitsu M2624FA in a pile of old drives and tried it instead. It formatted in about half an hour or so (I didn't really time it). Next step will be to try and install OpenVMS on the beast.

Here's the output of the format (just in case anyone is interested):

>>> show dev
VMS/VMB ULTRIX ADDR DEVTYP NUMBYTES RM/FX WP DEVNAM REV
------- ------ -------- ------ -------- ----- -- ------ ---
ESA0 SE0 08-00-2B-13-22-C4

...HostID.... A/6 INITR

DKB0 RZ8 B/0/0/00 DISK 520 MB FX M2624F-0405
...HostID.... B/6 INITR

>>> test 75

ScsHDerase



PV_SCS_FMT_CHN (0=SCSIA \ 1=SCSIB) ? 1



PV_SCS_FMT_ID (0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7) ? 0



PV_SCS_FMT_RUsure (1\0) ? 1

PV_SCS_FMTing..................................... .....
PV_SCS_FMT_BBrepl = 0

PV_SCS_FMT_SUCC

>>>

[eugeneman42]

As one final note for anyone who ends up searching this forum and finding this thread, the Fujitsu M2949SYU 9.1GB drive ultimately ended up working as a second drive. Using the 520MB drive as the system drive I installed VMS and initialized the M2949SYU under VMS and it works great. So, it appears that this drive will work fine as a secondary drive, but not as the boot drive. Go figure!