Re: Repost: can't get hard drive to boot GS/OS

[David.Empson@bbs.actrix.gen.nz]

In article <1993Feb11.223729.9308@labtam.labtam.oz.au> philip@labtam.labtam.oz.au (Philip Stephens) writes:
>
>   I have two partitions set up: the boot partition is 8 Mb (the other 32
> Mb).  When I installed System 5.04 onto the boot partition and set the hard
> drive as the startup device, it would crash midway through the booting
> process.
>   Last night I held down OPEN APPLE-OPTION-ESC in order to obtain more
> information about what GS/OS was doing; it showed that the computer was
> crashing after the "Init Manager Part 3, version 3.00" was loaded.  This
> code exists within the file GS.OS in the SYSTEMS folder.

You only need to press the SPACE bar to do this, not something complicated.

The next line that should be displayed is the ProDOS FST, but
something else might be loaded first.  I can't find the documentation
on GS/OS's boot sequence at the moment.

>   Next I copied System 5.04 from the hard drive back onto a floppy disk,
> and booted off that floppy.  It also crashed in exactly the same place.
> Thus it *appears* that I have some bad blocks on my hard drive that is
> corrupting the GS.OS file.

Weird.  I gather booting directly from your 5.0.4 system disk works
OK (with SCSI drivers installed)?

>   However, verifying the hard drive using the Apple // High Speed SCSI
> Utilities disk shows up no bad blocks, neither does verifying the hard
> drive using the Finder.  Shouldn't the hard drive communicate back to the
> SCSI card whenever it can't read a block?  Mine doesn't seem to!

It might be corrupting the data without reporting it.  If so, the hard
drive could be faulty.  Is your SCSI bus terminated properly?  Which
SCSI card do you have?

>   I have tried doing a low level format, but the hard drive doesn't support
> it.  Is there any way I can do a low level format?  Would writing zero 
> blocks to the hard drive help?

It might.  You should be able to do a low-level format by running
Advanced Disk Utility, repartitioning the drive so that it has one
partition, then formatting it.  After doing that, re-partition it with
two partitions again.  (If the reformat takes practically no time,
then you're right about the hard drive not supporting low-level
format, and zeroing is probably the best you can manage.)
-- 
David Empson

Internet: David.Empson@bbs.actrix.gen.nz    EMPSON_D@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand