****************************************************************************** ** ** ** W A R N I N G ! ! ! ** ** ** ** ** ** I do not agree with the fix presented in this article. It is much safer ** ** to completely remove the drive from the chassis and do the following: ** ** ** ** 1. Hold drive with circuit board toward your hand and SCSI connector ** ** facing you between your thumb and index finger. ** ** ** ** 2. Perform a quick snap of your rist in a plan parallel to the regular ** ** rotational motion of the drive, starting and stopping abruptly. ** ** ** ** 3. Do step two twice just to be sure and return the drive to the system ** ** chassis. ** ** ** ** 4. Apply power to the system. You should hear the drive spin up like ** ** normal now. If not, repeat up to three times. If you still get ** ** nothing, you might as follow this guide, as I would consider the ** ** drive dead that that point. If this guide fails, try opening the ** ** drive (careful NOT to fingerprint the drive). Use a non-ferrous ** ** tool to touch a non-media area of the drive and attempt to rotate ** ** the cylinder a few degrees. It is recommended you do this with the ** ** drive power OFF. ** ** ** ** - Chris Hooper (cdh@mtu.edu) ** ** ** ****************************************************************************** From: relling@eng.auburn.edu (Richard Elling) Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun Subject: Quantum Prodrive Problems Message-ID: <7399@brazos.Rice.edu> Date: 3 May 90 15:09:21 GMT Approved: Sun-Spots@rice.edu X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 151, message 4 Yesterday we had a little power outage. When the juice came back 11 SS-1s were dead. Here's the error message seen on the console: Testing Booting from: sd(0,0,0)vmunix Can't read disk label. Can't read boot blocks. Boot load failed Type b (boot), c (continue), or n (new command mode) Needless to say it wasn't shaping up to be a good day. Fortunately, sun-managers came to the rescue. Here's a synopsis and a (risky) fix: Thanks to everyone that responded to my request for help with my dead Quantum ProDrives. Briefly stated, the problem was that after a power failure, 11 machines refused to boot complaining that they could not read the disk labels. Notes: o The problem rests entirely within the drive. Apparently, the Quantum ProDrive line suffers from a problem in which the armature will stick. The most notable symptom is that the drive will not spin up. This problem has affected Quantum drives shipped with Apple products. o The cover must be removed before you have a good chance of deter- mining if the drive is properly spinning (they are quiet even when spinning :-) o The drive access indicator light does *not* indicate that the drive is spinning or the armature is moving. o The probe-scsi command will indicate that the drive exists and provide the model number, but I believe this is stored in ROM on the controller and therefore not an indication that the drive is functioning. o Since the drive is not spinning the controller will not indicate to UNIX that the drive exists. This means that you cannot run format or sundiag to attempt to fix the drive as they will not recognize that the drive exists. The affected drive will not show up in the list of available devices during boot. o The problem has also affected Quantum drives shipped with Apple products. Quantum has apparently provided a firmware fix which seems to work. The majority of our SS-1s were purchased early last summer and were shipped in August. All of our machines that were affected (11 total) were from the August shipment. And now... the moment you've all been waiting for... THE FIX! Quite simply, whack it. A solid, but not overbearing whack. The kind of whack you use on your kid's behind when (s)he drops ice cream on your least favorite neighbor's brand new shag carpet :-). Whack it with the power turned OFF. The first whack may not fix it (probably the same with your kids :-) so repeat as necessary. Z Z | | | TOP | <-- whacking here seems to work best | | +--u--------------+ /|\ light DISCLAIMER: This procedure could cause irrecoverable damage to your drive. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!!! Special thanks to the sun-managers!! You're the greatest! +-------------------------------+---------------------------------+ | Richard Elling | Manager of Network Support | | Auburn University | Engineering Administration | | Work: relling@eng.auburn.edu | (205)844-2280 | | Play: relling@cup.portal.com | AMPR.ORG: 44.100.0.72 (KB4HB-8) | +-------------------------------+---------------------------------+