Maxtor LXT-200S

[Bill Hargen]

In article <1990Aug5.165649.11896 at rice.edu> razzell at cs.ubc.ca (Dan Razzell) writes:
>
>We are in the process of installing some Maxtor 200MB SCSI disk drives
>into Sparcstations.  The drives are shipped without documentation, so
>while we wait for the installation manual to arrive, I thought I'd ask if
>anyone can readily provide the necessary setup to put these drives into
>service. In particular:
>
>1) How is the SCSI address jumpered?

Jumper settings (J6):
	 9  7  5  3  1
	 x  x  x  x  x
	 x  x  x  x  x
	10  8  6  4  2

9-10:	The parity disable jumper is not currently supported.  When it is
	it will enable (in) or disable (out) odd parity detection in the
	disk drive.  Currently, odd parity is always generated by the disk
	drive and provided to the SCSI bus.
7-8:	With no jumper, the disk drive does not spin up until the initiator
	issues a START/STOP UNIT command with the start bit equal to one.
	(This option is not implemented.)
	With a jumper, the motor starts as soon as power is applied.
5-6:	SCSI ID (most significant bit, in=1, out=0)
3-4:	SCSI ID
1-2:	SCSI ID (least significant bit)
7-8: motor start on 

>2) I also heard some mention of parity and spinup delay, if anyone can
>   suggest appropriate jumper settings.

Other than the above, I don't have any info.

>3) Does anyone have a format.dat entry for this drive that they would like
>   to share?

I'm working on writing a SCSI driver and the LXT-200S is one of the drives
that I'm testing with.  I'm including both the "raw info" as well as a
format.dat entry.  But beware: I have not tested the format.dat entry.
(It was easier to write it then to explain *how* to compute some of the
info.  See the Sun Sys Admin Guide and the man page for format.dat for
details.)  Note that you should add this to format.dat - don't just let
the format program prompt you for this.  "format" doesn't ask all of the
questions.

	# accessable cylinders = 1314
	# data heads = 7
	sectors/track = ** varies based on recording zone **
	tracks / defect zone = 1
	alt sectors / defect zone = 1 (can be larger, but 1 should be enough)
	alt tracks / defect zone = 0
	alt tracks / volume = 0
	interleave = 1
	capacity (with 1 alt sector/track) = 392056 512-byte sectors

disk_type = "Maxtor LXT-200S" \
	: ctlr = MD21 : fmt_time = 1 \
	: trks_zone = 1 : atrks = 0 : asect = 1 \
	: ncyl = 1300 : acyl = 2 : pcyl = 1314 : nhead = 7 : nsect = 43 \
	: rpm = 3600 : bpt = 17000

Note that the number of sectors/track varies (the drive puts more sectors
per track in the outer cylinders).  nsect and ncyl have been fudged so
that the computed capacity is less than 392056 - 2 cylinders.  Also, bpt
is rather bogus since it varies depending on the recording zone.

>I can confirm at this point that these drives do indeed run very hot.  Not
>hot enough to fry eggs, but almost too hot to touch.  Don't know that I
>would want to be reincarnated as a Maxtor controller chip.  It might
>almost be worth drilling out the ventilation holes under these drives,
>just to give the fan a bit of a chance, always bearing in mind that a good
>mass of air still needs to flow over the SIMM area.

Just what SIMM's need: a good mass of pre-heated air flowing over them!
:-( (Keep in mind that the SIMM's are somewhat between the hard disk(s)
and the fan.)  I prefer to keep the toasters out of the system cabinet.
I'd be more concerned about the drive baking the system board than cooking
itself.  The drive is a lot cheaper!

Bill Hargen				AT&T Paradyne
{uunet,peora}!pdn!hargen		Mail stop LG-132
Phone: (813) 530-8655			P.O. Box 2826
					Largo, FL  34649-2826