[SunRescue] RE: HELP! Sun 386i Hard Drive Problems <Again>

[Paul Zibaila]

Lie to the install script and tell it the drive is a 91 or the 155 megger
(I always try the 91 meg choice first) This should let you at least get 
the system installed and see if the machine will come up. The only time 
this approach didn't work was with an old 2 gig Seagate drive that just
wouldn't boot at all on the 386i or any of my old sparcs.

Even if you go into the "expert mode" and format the drive then try and 
run the script it goes back and reformats and makes the file systems 
based on the three choices. There are one or two lines in the install
script that cause this to happen. If your handy with sed you can comment 
them out and format and then format the drive and restart the install
script.
Assuming you have another system that you can pull the install script onto
and peruse it looking for where it does the format and runs newfs or mkfs
I can't remember which one it is. Comment the format out on the installation
and do your thing. 

When I started twiddling with Suns all I had was a couple of 386i's and 
it was a pain. I wasn't sharp enough to get into the script during the 
install so I did the lie about disk size using an old 210 meg quantum 
and then twiddled the install script once I had a booting system. 

I think you could modify the format.dat entry for one of the drives listed
and chose it during the install. But if memory serves me the only editing
tool available during the install is sed. So it was just easier for me to
comment the offending line(s) in the script, format the disk by hand,
and then run the script.

I had commented the script and rolled it back into the tape file a long time
ago
but haven't a clue where the tapes are at the present time.

Happy Hacking
pwz ii


>Message: 14
>From: "Steve K" <gelcel at hotmail.com>
> snip
>Subject: [SunRescue] HELP!  Sun 386i Hard Drive Problems <Again>

>{snip}
>SO...I went to Sunhelp.org & got the FAQ on how to add a non OEM HD to this

>thing and I'm all confused...  If someone out there could give me a step by

>step list of how to go about doing this I would be very happy.
>Currently it seems that whenever I try to do this it's getting pissed off 
>because at one point or another I have to tell it what kind of hard drive
it 
>has in it (they give you 3 choices: a 91, a 155 and a 327) but the hard 
>drive I'm trying to get going is a Quantum 270meg   (the only one I had 
>laying around) and is not close to anything they want to provide.  Plus I'm

>getting all confused when I need to do the bock / cylinder/head/sector 
>conversions...

>{snip}

>Thanks a abunch!
>-Steve