QD34 and Fujitsu M2372K

[vlad_2011]

Good day.

I have a QD34 controller with its cables and panel. I also have a Fujitsu M2372K HDD.
I want to connect it to my excellent VAXServer 4000-200. The server is in a BA213 enclosure,
and the controller installs without any issues.

According to the documentation, the controller initializes its onboard BIOS to configure the HDD.
However, when I power on the system, the drive does not go through the expected startup sequence
on its LEDs – instead, it produces an error code that is not listed in the HDD manual.
Consequently, the QD34 does not detect the HDD.

All devices should be functional, as I sourced them from known good but long-idle equipment.

If anyone has experience with such devices, I would greatly appreciate your help.

 

[Radix]

SMD drives are not plug and play - have you configured it according to the manual??

What does the drive do if just powered up, not connected to the controller?

Robin

 

[Alegend]

Good day.

I have a QD34 controller with its cables and panel. I also have a Fujitsu M2372K HDD.
I want to connect it to my excellent VAXServer 4000-200. The server is in a BA213 enclosure,
and the controller installs without any issues.

According to the documentation, the controller initializes its onboard BIOS to configure the HDD.
However, when I power on the system, the drive does not go through the expected startup sequence
on its LEDs – instead, it produces an error code that is not listed in the HDD manual.
Consequently, the QD34 does not detect the HDD.

All devices should be functional, as I sourced them from known good but long-idle equipment.

If anyone has experience with such devices, I would greatly appreciate your help.

I also have a M2372K, and a QD33 SMD controller.
I spent days trying to make them work together, the best result I got was numerous read errors.
I did not know what to suspect, the controller or the cables or the disk drive.

I switched to a WQSMD controller and it all works together beautifully.

So maybe QD3x do not like M2372K? Of course it could just be a faulty controller but I have no way to test.

-Alon.

 

[vlad_2011]

SMD drives are not plug and play - have you configured it according to the manual??

What does the drive do if just powered up, not connected to the controller?

Robin

Good day!
I made a short video showing how the HDD starts up without a controller. Please note that I don't have the original power supply, so I built a power supply using three MW (Mean Well) units according to the HDD documentation. Each power supply is more powerful than necessary.

 

[vlad_2011]

I also have a M2372K, and a QD33 SMD controller.
I spent days trying to make them work together, the best result I got was numerous read errors.
I did not know what to suspect, the controller or the cables or the disk drive.

I switched to a WQSMD controller and it all works together beautifully.

So maybe QD3x do not like M2372K? Of course it could just be a faulty controller but I have no way to test.

-Alon.

Thanks — that's interesting.
I have a panel with cables that goes with the controller, and the connectors on the controller match. The controller doesn't throw any errors — it just doesn't see the drive when I run the configuration monitor.
Of course, the drive or the controller could be faulty, but I took them from a known working server. It's very likely they were purchased together, but maybe they just couldn't get it configured properly.

 

[vlad_2011]

I also have a M2372K, and a QD33 SMD controller.
I spent days trying to make them work together, the best result I got was numerous read errors.
I did not know what to suspect, the controller or the cables or the disk drive.

I switched to a WQSMD controller and it all works together beautifully.

So maybe QD3x do not like M2372K? Of course it could just be a faulty controller but I have no way to test.

-Alon.

 

[Terri Kennedy]

I also have a M2372K, and a QD33 SMD controller.
I spent days trying to make them work together, the best result I got was numerous read errors.
I did not know what to suspect, the controller or the cables or the disk drive.

[E]SMD drives are like ST506 and similar drives (or even floppies) that people may be familiar with, in that they just accept or provide a raw bit stream from/to the controller. This means that the controller needs to agree with the drive as to the number of sectors, "gaps", etc. These can vary by controller. For example, the SC71, SC41/MS, and QD33 are all made by Emulex, but each uses different drive settings when talking to the same drive.

The most common problems are using an ESMD drive that only supports SMD data rates (not an issue here), disagreement on sector size (physical bytes needed for an on-disk sector, not the 512-byte sector you get from the controller), and disagreements about extended tags (this last one usually won't prevent operation - it's an optimization most useful with multiple drives).

Setting the sector size on a drive can be done in one of two ways (and some drives offer both): sector size or number of sectors per track. There is a fixed number of bytes on a track, and the controller requires a certain number of bytes for headers, gaps, miscellaneous other stuff, and checksums. Once you know how many bytes/sector the controller needs, divide the number of bytes on a track by that to get the number of usable sectors*. Doing the math on this can get to be a grind, so many controller manuals give you pre-calculated settings for some common example drives.

* If there are almost enough bytes for a full sector, and the controller is careful and the drive is willing, it is possible to use that last ("runt") sector. If somebody isn't careful, those sectors can appear to work but might clobber data on the first sector. In general, unless the controller documentation tells you that runts are allowed on the specific drive you're using, assume they aren't.

But none of the above is relevant on a drive that won't go ready. That needs troubleshooting and fixing before any of the above enter into the equation.

 

[m_thompson]

I have a pair of CDC/Seagate 1.3 GB ESMD drives on an Emulex controller. The support people showed me how to set the 50 or so rip switches on the drive to make it talk. They are really fast for an SMD drive.

 

[Bitly]

Do you have a terminator on the control cable? If memory serves there is/was a dongle you could plug into the unused control out connector on the drive.

CW

 

[glitch]

RetroHacker_ and I got QD33s working with some of the SMD drives he has a number of years ago...we slogged at it for several days before realizing the first drive off the heap was in fact faulted! Mostly we just followed the Emulex manual. RetroHacker_ had a bunch of the stuff for running SMD already though, having supported it on Pr1me minis.

 

[Terri Kennedy]

RetroHacker_ and I got QD33s working with some of the SMD drives he has a number of years ago...we slogged at it for several days before realizing the first drive off the heap was in fact faulted!

Been there, did that...

On one of my work trips to the LSSM, I was asked to cable up an already-racked Eagle to the SC72 in the 11/70 chassis. Except there was no SC72 in the 11/70!

After 2 scrounges (one to find an SC72 board set and a second to find a working SC72 board set), I cabled up the drive. XXDP's RP06 formatter won't run on the SC72, so I used the brief toggle-in in the Emulex manual. But then after the format was "complete" the RSTS/E bad block scan reported the disk was unusable.

I got tired of dealing with the Emulex toggle-in, so I brought in a VAX 4000-200 that was in my car - always travel with a spare VAX, you never know when you'll need one. Dave came up with a QD33 (which of course requires the drive to be completely re-jumpered) and running the QD33's on-board formatter caused it to give up with a "Too many bad sectors" error.

At that point I decided I had a bad drive and asked Dave if there was a spare around. I found that there was one propping up the mini-fridge in the back break room, so I hauled it out. I swapped the HDA as I wasn't interested in lifting a whole Eagle to shoulder height. Things were much better, but the formatter was still telling me "Too many bad sectors". It was late, so I went back to my hotel room. In my room, I read the Eagle Maintenance Manual and it said that after replacing the HDA, a bunch of trimpots on one of the boards needed to be adjusted, using an extender card and shielded cables. Unlike (for example) the RA81, where all of that is on the small board that travels with the HDA.

Since we didn't have the extender stuff, I just swapped those boards, so each drive had one that matched its HDA. I then ran the formatter and it completed successfully. So I went back in the now-fixed Eagle and re-jumpered it for the SC72.

While I was using RSTS/E to format the drive, I found the original manufacturer's bad block printout taped to the inside of the second drive's cover. It listed 103 defects, one of which was annotated "Bad track". RSTS/E found 104 defects, so I called it fixed and buttoned everything up (making sure the cover with the factory defect list ended up on the repaired drive).

 

[glitch]

After 2 scrounges (one to find an SC72 board set and a second to find a working SC72 board set), I cabled up the drive. XXDP's RP06 formatter won't run on the SC72, so I used the brief toggle-in in the Emulex manual. But then after the format was "complete" the RSTS/E bad block scan reported the disk was unusable.

Hey, you got further than we did with the SC72! RetroHacker_ had one of those that we started with, and we could never get the RP06 formatter patch to take properly. Not sure if it was us, the controller, or the drive. We do know for certain it wasn't the PDP-11 or the cabling, since that was all used successfully with the QD33.

 

[Terri Kennedy]

Hey, you got further than we did with the SC72! RetroHacker_ had one of those that we started with, and we could never get the RP06 formatter patch to take properly. Not sure if it was us, the controller, or the drive. We do know for certain it wasn't the PDP-11 or the cabling, since that was all used successfully with the QD33.

If you have something you can boot RSTS/E from, INIT.SYS has a full set of formatters built-in. Even for many disk types it no longer supports!

Regarding the patch, it may have been for a different revision of the XXDP formatter that you were using.

Hmmm. SC72 and maybe UD33? QD33 is Q-bus, and an SC72 won't fit in one of those.