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mfm or esdi controller old xenix

crash

This is an ancient post with no relevance to modern systems.

Subject: Re: vintage computer
References: <20021125214315.GB1626@jpradley.jpr.com> 
From: spcecdt@deeptht.armory.com (John DuBois)
Date: 26 Nov 2002 23:51:57 GMT

In article <20021125214315.GB1626@jpradley.jpr.com>,
Jean-Pierre Radley  <jpr@jpr.com> wrote:
>I was called to try to revive a vintage computer, running Xenix, which
>can't find /boot.
>
>The hard disk controller card is not one I can recall ever seeing.  It's
>an ISA card with four connectors: one running to a 5.25" floppy (and
>also to a Colorado Junko), one marked Drive 0 with nothing connected to
>it.
>
>There's a connector (about twelve pins) marked Drive 0, and another (about
>twenty pins) marked Winchester.  Both of these are connected to the hard
>drive with ribbon cables.
>
>I thought to take the hard drive with me, but I have no HA adapter with
>that sort of cabling at all.

If it's complaining about not being able to read /boot, it's successfully read
masterboot, hdboot0, and hdboot1, so it may be that the hardware is all fine,
and the problem is just disk corruption.  In that case, you might bring both
drive and the controller card currently in use to another machine, even one
running 5.0.x, configure XENIX fs support in, and try mounting the root
filesystem and either patch it up or copy the data to another drive.

        John
-- 
John DuBois  spcecdt@armory.com  KC6QKZ/AE  http://www.armory.com/~spcecdt/
 

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