"Adding a one 1GB disk on 9000/400 Series Workstation"

[Reynaldo Torres]

Kindly I need to know if someone could help to add a 1GB disk on 9000/400 series workstation. I know this is a really old machine but due to some compiler that still needs to be running under this machine I need to keep it up. In order to add this disk and create a new filesystem I need to add the disk under /etc/disktab but I don't know old the fields depending on the side of this for example:
ns = Number of 1k sectors per track
nt = Number of tracks per cylinder
nc = Total number of cylinders in the file system
S0 = Size of the system in 1k blocks
b0 = Block size in bytes
f0 = Fragment size in bytes (1k, K, 4k)
se = Number of bytes per physical sector
rm = Revolution per minute.

The disk is a FUJITSU M2694ES-512
Also I would like to know if I could add an internal disk to run the OS from there with a 9GB due the one I have is really small is only 245MB and I would like to add a SEAGATE disk.
I will really appreciated if anyone could help me on this.
Thank you so much for the help.

Reynaldo Torres.
torresr@hydroaire.com

[Bill Hassell · Accepted solution]

The 400 is running some version of 9.x or earlier and unfortunately, you must determine the disktab parameters from documentation from the manufacturer. Only a few of the values are important and the comments in the disktab file should help...

As far as 9Gb, that's not possible. When the 400 was obsolete, a 9Gb drive simply did not exist and 2Gb drives required special techniques to handle the massive amount of data (2 Gb). Even a 4 Gb drive will not work unless you are willing to use just the first 2Gb. (you might want to think hard about getting a replacement machine--tiny 1 and 2Gb disks that will work are very rare)

[Michael Lampi]

You should not have been so quick to assign points. :-)

While it is true that the OS requires disktab parameters for the newfs command, the "mkfs" command does not. Even if you absolutely *must* use the newfs command, then you could enter whatever numbers you choose to factor the capacity of the disk drive into.

For example, let's say that the drive had a capacity of 98760 blocks. The s0 value is 98760, and you could pick a value of 10 for nt and, dividing 98760 by 10 you get 9876, which would be used as the value for ns.

The other values are not really important.


As far as getting new drives to work in your old system, what Bill said is somewhat true. So, you need to work with someone who either has access to a stock of working older drives, such as MDL Corp. (the company I work for), or work with a company (such as MDL) that can reduce the capacity of a current model disk drive down to just under 2GB.

You could even add extra storage external to your 400 series workstation to provide the extra space required, and not affect your current internal disk drives.

[Reynaldo Torres]

Micheal I really thank you for your respond too. Can you help me to set up a disk with a size of 1GB because some of the parameters I really don't know how to set them up and maybe as you mentioned that setting the disk from the command line might work I wouold like to know if you have some kind of documents of procedures that could help me to do this. You know this is something I did not want to do but this is a license compiler that only run on this 900/400t machine and if we try to get a new compiler will cost millions of dollars and this data that needs to be supported for our customers whether we like it or not. I will give top points as well and you right I should not give the points yet but I know this an old machine and not many UNIX Administrators work with them any more including myself.

Thank you

Thanks again