rafal@utstat.toronto.edu
Date: 03/13/93


Message-Id: <9303131823.AA24620@stereo.csl.uiuc.edu.uicslrvl>
From: rafal@utstat.toronto.edu
Date: Sat, 13 Mar 1993 13:24 EST
Subject: Re: Maxtor and Linux

Article 12461 of comp.os.linux:
Path: utstat!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!skule.ecf!utcsri!rpi!think.com!sdd.hp.com!caen!uunet!math.fu-berlin.de!news.netmbx.de!Germany.EU.net!mcsun!news.funet.fi!hydra!klaava!torvalds
From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Torvalds)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux
Subject: Re: Weird disk corruption (tar off msdos partition)
Message-ID: <1992Oct4.072803.23147@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
Date: 4 Oct 1992 07:28:03 GMT
References: <lcrnvkINN1s3@ozona.cs.utexas.edu> <3835@ra.nrl.navy.mil> <lct1i3INN31p@ozona.cs.utexas.edu>
Organization: University of Helsinki
Lines: 31

In article <lct1i3INN31p@ozona.cs.utexas.edu> jefftep@cs.utexas.edu (Jeffrey Grills) writes:
>
> maxtor 7213a hd (never had any timeouts)
>
>I think there is some underlying problem. I've had tons of things weird
>happen that have never had real solutions discovered for. For instance,
>I think but cannot verify the following accusations:
>
> I've compared 2 files multiple times, getting 3 different results from cmp
> I'm one of the people that gets Signal 11 from gcc/cc1 (still on occasion)
> I've had the kernel complain about "swap weirdness" once (something like that)
> I've done the cat|uncompress|tar thing and had tar complain about a bad input
> file, only to try it again, with no changes, and have it work fine

Definitely sounds like the buffer corruption problem with older maxtor
7213A's.

Here is an excerpt from a post by swaliff@afterlife.ncsc.mil (Steve Aliff):
>
> Some of you may have been following my trials and tribulations with
> a Maxtor 7213A under Linux. I spoke with Maxtor tech support today,
> and they agreed that there was a problem with early 7213As and the
> commercial variants of Unix (Xenix, SCO). If you have a 7213A whose
> PCBA number is less than 63, then you may have a problem with it
> under Linux. My present drive's PCBA number is 54. (The PCBA number
> is their revision tracking number of the on-board controller board.)
> The PCBA number is listed on the label on top of the drive.

Upgrading to a newer 7213A helped at least Steve.

                Linus

-- 
/|| " Numbers exist only in our minds. There is no physical entity that
 ||  that _is_ number 1. If there were, 1 would be in a place of honor 
 ||  in some great museum of science, and past it would file a 
==== steady stream of mathematicians gazing at 1 in wonder and awe. "