Back with PROBLEM -- PANIC took out HD
All I did was put in a 1.44 MB floppy to format and a window opened with LOTS of streaming text and ended with a PANIC and a system freeze.
I popped the floppy out and restarted the computer using the Command -tilde to get the "r" for restart, but when the system startup bar progressed it got as far as Checking The System and then when it started to load the system the HD got very loud with the clicking and it would not progress.....
I popped the drive OUT and replaced it with another drive that has a boot system on it.
Logged in as root with no password to get a desktop... and the OS is just a shadow of the previous install - no demos.
And I have no "home" account. This sucks.
How do I set one up ??
Can my old HD be fixed ??
It is a 4 GB drive and the one I just popped in is only 540MB....
Mike
That sucks Mike. Remember that I was suspicious of the 4G drive because it initially was a bit flaky but it then settled down and started behaving normally.
You have two options: either find a known good spinny drive or get on of the flash or SSD based alternatives. The 50 pin SCSI drives are getting harder and harder to source. There are also ways of connecting some 68 pin drives internally with appropriate adapter and termination.
Thanks to T-Rexty, I had a small older 500mb SCSI back-up drive with a fresh install of NS3.3 to fall back on.
Yeah.... I put in the little back-up drive, started up in root, found the Account Manager application, and created a new User account for me.... and everything is running OK again.... right back where I started.
It just ticks me off having to go from a newer partitioned 4 GB drive down to only 500 MB, and now the information display shelf indicates that I only have about 110 MB free instead of the 1.4 GB on the partition I was running off and 1.6gb on the Storage.
I had some great software (the Lightning stuff) I was playing with on the other HD and now I don't have room to install it on the new drive. The only App I have installed now is OpenWrite.
Can the 4.3 GB Quantum be repaired ?
Are there Disk Repair utilities for NexTStep ??
Mike
Quote from: "Mike"Can the 4.3 GB Quantum be repaired ?
Are there Disk Repair utilities for NexTStep ??
I guess nobody can give a remote diagnosis here. These old drives just fail physically. A repair utility will not help. If a drive has physically failed you might be able to get it to work for a short time (by heating it up, opening it, ...) but you cannot trust it anymore.
If you want a stable stable system for a longer time go for an SCSI2SD or something similar.
Mike, you should definitely consider the SCSI2SD:
http://www.codesrc.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=SCSI2SDBut before you pull the plug, please make sure to confirm with Rob Blessin that the latest hardware version 6 works glitch free with all NeXT hardware configurations.
I have looked on eBay and the prices for 50 pin SCSI drives have gone insane. I guess the supply has shrunk to virtually non-existence while the retro-computing demand is still strong.
There are other options available as well but they would be more expensive. Unless, of course, you can source a known reliable and working drive through your user group.
Let me know and I can re-image the system for you again.
Version 5 is still available here: Click to go to Inertial Computing Site (USA) (
https://store.inertialcomputing.com/category-s/100.htm)
Mike, there are threads here that will help you set up the SCSI2SD to run on your NeXTstation.
Quote from: "t-rexky"Mike, you should definitely consider the SCSI2SD:
http://www.codesrc.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=SCSI2SD
But before you pull the plug, please make sure to confirm with Rob Blessin that the latest hardware version 6 works glitch free with all NeXT hardware configurations.
I have looked on eBay and the prices for 50 pin SCSI drives have gone insane. I guess the supply has shrunk to virtually non-existence while the retro-computing demand is still strong.
There are other options available as well but they would be more expensive. Unless, of course, you can source a known reliable and working drive through your user group.
Let me know and I can re-image the system for you again.
Fan F******tastic:
I will raid the basement: T-Rexty: you, Sir, are a gentleman !!!
I still have a pair of Daystar Genesis MP 800 Mac Clones down there .... and I suspect there are still a few small decent SCSI drives in them, like maybe two or three.
I will make up a parcel and drop them into the mail to you up there in Palgrave. If you could do your magic again, I promise I will not stick any dubious floppy disks into the machine again ! That Quantum Viking was working flawlessly before the floppy disk brought the system down.
My concern with this computer is that as soon as I buy and get one of those SCSI2SD things properly configured the capacitors will crap out !!!
OK if I send you a parcel ?? I still have the box from last time !!
Mike
Hi Mike. Yes, feel free to ship the lot to me again. You may want to include the failed 4GB drive as well so I can confirm it has failed.
Please note that there is no way that inserting the floppy would have damaged your hard disk. What has likely happened is your hard disk was going bad again and when you inserted the floppy the system tried to load resources required to access the floppy (the floppy driver). It was unable to do so which caused the kernel to crash (panic). Subsequent boot either encountered more issues with the hard disk or the file system structure got damaged during the crash. Most likely the former...
GREAT !!!!
I have them boxed up now. Each drive in a static-free bag and the drives in a box in a box in a box with lots of padding.
I will wait until after the weekend and send on Monday morning with one-day-delivery. I will definitely include the failed 4-gig drive and two other SCSI drives, a 1.2 GB and something else. You should have them on Tuesday when you get home from the Long Commute.
Again: I can't tell you how much I appreciate your generosity.
M
Mike, my suspicions have been confirmed!
As I mentioned to you in the email, the drive passes all of the diagnostics with flying colours. So there is nothing wrong with the drive itself.
I had a little bit of time this morning to plug the drive into my TurboColor. It booted the kernel and then proceeded to perform a file system integrity check. There were no issues found on either one of the two partitions and the machine subsequently booted just fine!
So here is my summary of what happened to you:
- Your computer had a kernel panic after inserting a diskette (I don't know why this happened, but it could be related to the floppy drive or main board capacitors being deteriorated, for example).
- You rebooted the system.
- After loading the kernel, NEXTSTEP identified that the computer has not been properly shut-down on the previous run (it crashed, remember), and proceeded to perform a file system check (fsck).
- The fsck takes several minutes and really exercises the hard disk, typically making quite a bit of noise.
- Not being aware of the above, you misinterpreted the delay and the noise as the hard disk failing.
Typical UNIX systems of NEXTSTEP vintage used file systems that really did not like being forcefully interrupted. In order to indicate to the system that previous shutdown was "clean", the last thing that happens before power is removed from the system, a sequence of bits is written out to the hard disk that identifies the system has been cleanly shut-down. Similarly, the first thing that happens after the system is powered-up and comes up, a sequence of bits is written out to the hard disk that identifies the system is "dirty". If a shutdown occurs without the correct sequence, such as due to a power outage or a system crash (kernel panic), on the subsequent boot the system will see a "dirty" state as opposed to "clean" state and will run the fsck.
Modern systems such as Windows, Linux and OS X do the exact same thing, but they have much more advanced file systems, and the fsck (or equivalent) takes a fraction of a second as opposed to minutes.
I posted this here so that the information could perhaps be useful to others who have no experience with 1980s and 1990s UNIX and UNIX-like systems.
Wonderful news !! It sounds to me like you have diagnosed the situation precisely. The System check is something I did not expect and thought that the drive was protesting. I should have let it do its thing and not panicked.
I am looking forward to getting the Quantum Viking back because it is a nice drive and quick.
I cannot thank you enough for your help...
but as a token of my appreciation I must ask if you would PM me your PayPal address if you have one so I can forward you a response that will cover return postage of the drives I sent you plus the price of a decent bottle of wine for you and your wife to enjoy.
Michael
Did you try to insert a floppy with another SCSI drive installed?
Yep.
I threw that floppy that had caused the panic out .... and put in a smaller SCSI drive (540MB) and have been using it.
Floppy disks (OTHER floppy disks) MS-DOS, Apple formatted and NexT-formatted all work perfectly.
Mike
That is good. But it is unclear why the kernel panic happened, right?
Hopefully it was just a software issue and not the floppy drive or the capacitors.
Seriously.........
I'm hoping that as well..
Mike
Quote from: "Mike"I cannot thank you enough for your help...
but as a token of my appreciation I must ask if you would PM me your PayPal address if you have one so I can forward you a response that will cover return postage of the drives I sent you plus the price of a decent bottle of wine for you and your wife to enjoy.
It is my pleasure.
The package is now on its way and you should get it tomorrow or by Wednesday. The Viking should be all good to go once you receive it so you will be back to 4G.
Thank you so much for the wine offer, that is very kind of you. But I have done all this work so that you can enjoy the machine properly and so that a piece of important computing history is well preserved in good hands.
A number of us here have done similar things with our precious time in the past, for similar reasons... :wink:
Hmmmmmmm....
Piotr:
If its not too much trouble, can you see if they gave you a tracking number for the package ?? "Overnight next-day delivery" it isn't !!
Here it is Wednesday evening and the local post office has nothing for me.
Mike
Excellent!
Canada Post at their best: Express Post package taking three days to travel the distance I could travel on a bicycle in three hours...
