Summary of 451->7053: reformat necessary?

From: Richard Schultz (rich%idacrd@princeton.edu)
Date: Thu Mar 22 1990 - 13:22:07 CST


Original question:

It has been my impression that the Xylogics 7053 disk controller is supposed to
be "plug and play" compatible with the Xylogics 451, that is, you don't need to
reformat the disks when you upgrade from a 451 to a 7053. Indeed, this is
supposed to be its major advantage over the Ciprico and Interphase controllers.

Unfortunately, it didn't work last night. After installing a 7053 in place of
a 451, boot couldn't find a label on the disk and format claimed it was not
formatted. Am I missing some switch or jumper settings? Is my impression
completely wrong? Please let me know and I'll summarize.

The victim: a Sun 3/260, with a Fujitsu 2361 (super eagle) and a NEC 2362
driven by the same 451 controller, hopefully to be driven by the same 7053
controller.

The consolidated net answer:

Yes, you have to reformat. Furthermore, the 451 and 7053 store the defect list
in a different format, so you have to dump the defect list before you swap
controllers and restore it after the swap. (The format program can do this.)

Thanks (in order of appearance) to: Paul Graham, Eduardo Krell, Jay Plett,
Dennis Morse, Jeff Edelheit, Manavendra K. Thakur, Charles Hedrick,
Rick Thomas, Eric Carroll, John E. Schimmel, Bobby Bodenheimer, Lee Vrieze,
Phil Ritzenthaler, Bill Vaughn, Michael Baumann, Mark Morrissey, Bob Hoffman.

Rich Schultz
rich%idacrd.uucp@princeton.edu
uunet!idacrd!rich



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