Disk Formatting Fails Using Standalone Fx; Mezzanine Board Configurations - Silicon Graphics POWER CHALLENGE User Manual

Appendix D: Challenge IO4 PROM, Mezzanine, and Troubleshooting
Mezzanine Board Configurations
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Disk Formatting Fails Using Standalone fx

Systems running IRIX release 5.2 or earlier have a PROM problem that
causes failure to format in the standalone version of fx. The PROM's SCSI
driver improperly calculates the duration of timeout requests and the PROM
times out prematurely. This terminates the formatting process before
completion and leaves the disk in a corrupt state. In this case, attempts to
read or write the disk will fail.
Always use the IRIX version of fx when formatting disks if the system is
running operating system release 5.2 or earlier.
If the disk has been corrupted by use of the standalone fx process, it can be
repaired by reformatting using the IRIX version of fx.
Each Challenge deskside system comes with one standard IO4 interface
board. See Chapter 1 for a technical overview of the IO4. The first IO4 in the
system always supports either the VME Channel Adapter Module (VCAM)
board or the Graphics Channel Adapter Module (GCAM) board.
If you are unsure of the system's hardware configuration, enter the hinv
command at the console. You should see something similar to the following:
% hinv <Enter>
2 75 MHZ IP21 Processors
CPU: MIPS R8000 Processor Chip Revision: 2.1
FPU: MIPS R8010 Floating Point Chip Revision: 0.1
Data cache size: 16 Kbytes
Instruction cache size: 16 Kbytes
Secondary unified instruction/data cache size: 4 Mbytes
Main memory size: 256 Mbytes, 2-way interleaved
I/O board, Ebus slot 5: IO4 revision 1
Integral EPC serial ports: 4
Integral Ethernet controller: et0, Ebus slot 3
Integral SCSI controller 2: Version WD33C95A
Tape drive: unit 6 on SCSI controller 2: DLT
Integral SCSI controller 1: Version WD33C95A
Disk drive: unit 1 on SCSI controller 1
Graphics board: GU1-Extreme