On 2013-06-13, wrote:
On Jun 12, 5:30?pm, Ignoramus21475 ignoramus21...@NOSPAM.
21475.invalid wrote:

I did not start this bragging competition, and that's my excuse for
posting the following: I just bought two "optical flats", 28 inches
diameter, for $50 each plus auction buyer's premium. Then some company
guy told me, Igor, do you know what you bought, I said kinda sorta,
and he said, they cost a million dollars each, they had to grow the
glass in a special chamber.



I am gonna sell them, that's for sure. One optical flat lays on
styrofoam, and has some imperfections, the other one "Unertl" stays
vertically in a super heavy enclosure, shielded by a locking shield,
and looks perfect.

i


Do you know what material they are made of? Back in Washington State
I worked on the Battlepoint Observatory.
Their mirror is 27.5 inches in diameter and made of Zerodur, a
extremely low coef of expansion material. They got the blank from
Boeing , it was ground for some star wars project. So they built a
grinding machine to regrind it for a mirror.

See http://www.bpastro.org/index.php?pag...chie-telescope

And see http://www.bpastro.org/index.php?pag...d-of-directors for
the directors. You might contact Malcolm Saunders about selling the
flats. Ho might know someone who is looking for a large blank.

I am in a photo with John Rudolph on thils page.

http://www.bpastro.org/index.php?pag...chie-telescope


Dan

Dan, fascinating story, I might give them a holler.

i

"Bob Engelhardt" wrote in message
...
On 6/11/2013 6:35 PM, Karl Townsend wrote:
... a real nice monster wench....

Kinky

Chuckle!

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing! ;-)

Harold

On Jun 12, 11:32*pm, Ignoramus21475 ignoramus21...@NOSPAM.
21475.invalid wrote:


Dan, fascinating story, I might give them a holler.

i

Bainbridge Island is not a great place for an observatory. Too many
cloudy days. But a lot of talented people there. They also built a
planetarium that is useable regardlesls of the weather.


Dan

On 2013-06-13, wrote:
On Jun 12, 11:32?pm, Ignoramus21475 ignoramus21...@NOSPAM.
21475.invalid wrote:


Dan, fascinating story, I might give them a holler.

i

Bainbridge Island is not a great place for an observatory. Too many
cloudy days. But a lot of talented people there. They also built a
planetarium that is useable regardlesls of the weather.

I read somewhere, that due to light and air pollution, it is harder
and harder to find good places for observatories.

i

Ignoramus5948 wrote:

On 2013-06-12, Pete C. wrote:

Karl Townsend wrote:

On Tue, 11 Jun 2013 19:16:16 -0500, "Pete C."
wrote:


Karl Townsend wrote:

My son just got a free 15" southbend from grandpa just for coming to
visit. Dad tossed in a 12" bench grinder, and a small pickup load of
tools, and a real nice monster wench. No small trip - MN to NM - 2K
miles.

Then "The Kid" just won this auction
http://auctions.machinesused.com/lis...mnum=846984426

Now he's surfing fleabay for a couple VFDs.

Karl

I actually did pretty well over the weekend. I got a 1942 vintage 6x18
Norton surface grinder with hydraulic traverse and cross feed, a Brown
and Sharp mag chuck, a large selection of wheels and arbors, 5C spin
indexer, diamond dresser on a B&S mag base, small coolant pump/tank
unit, some assorted 1/2 and 1/4 Loc-Line components, a Precise S 65 high
speed spindle (needs collets and collet nut), two DuMont Minuteman
keyway broach sets, a chucking reamer set, a tub of assorted slotting
and slitting saws and a big box of assorted aluminum hunks 1/4"-3" thick
or so.

sounds like Iggy best get going, he's got competition for best
scrounger.

Heh, I spent about $1,400 including diesel to go get it. If Iggy got it
he'd spend that much but it would all come pre-loaded in a nice box
truck with lift gate and low miles included in the deal.

Hey, we all get great deals, good deals, and not so good deals, myself
included. What's important is

1) Always pay not more than market price for what you need
2) Always pay a lot less than the market price for stuff to be resold
3) Not to have way too much stuff that it impedes movement or cash flow

You will get great use of that grinder.

i

The grinder is running as of last night, and purrs like a 70 year old
kitten

"Pete C." wrote in message
. com...


The grinder is running as of last night, and purrs like a 70 year
old
kitten

I'm checking out a used hard drive that runs like a watch---


TICK, TICK, TICK and occasional ALARMing noises.

Jim Wilkins wrote:

"Pete C." ? wrote in message
. com...
?
?
? The grinder is running as of last night, and purrs like a 70 year
? old
? kitten

I'm checking out a used hard drive that runs like a watch---

TICK, TICK, TICK and occasional ALARMing noises.


Jim, you know better than to buy a 'Timex hard drive'!

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote:

Jim Wilkins wrote:
?
? "Pete C." ? wrote in message
? . com...
? ?
? ?
? ? The grinder is running as of last night, and purrs like a 70 year
? ? old
? ? kitten
?
? I'm checking out a used hard drive that runs like a watch---
?
? TICK, TICK, TICK and occasional ALARMing noises.

Jim, you know better than to buy a 'Timex hard drive'!


"When they start tick'n, your wallet takes a lick'n!"


Quite often, the drive can no longer read the boot sector, and keeps
trying to recalibrate the head positioner.

On 2013-06-13, Pete C. wrote:

Ignoramus5948 wrote:

On 2013-06-12, Pete C. wrote:

Karl Townsend wrote:

On Tue, 11 Jun 2013 19:16:16 -0500, "Pete C."
wrote:


Karl Townsend wrote:

My son just got a free 15" southbend from grandpa just for coming to
visit. Dad tossed in a 12" bench grinder, and a small pickup load of
tools, and a real nice monster wench. No small trip - MN to NM - 2K
miles.

Then "The Kid" just won this auction
http://auctions.machinesused.com/lis...mnum=846984426

Now he's surfing fleabay for a couple VFDs.

Karl

I actually did pretty well over the weekend. I got a 1942 vintage 6x18
Norton surface grinder with hydraulic traverse and cross feed, a Brown
and Sharp mag chuck, a large selection of wheels and arbors, 5C spin
indexer, diamond dresser on a B&S mag base, small coolant pump/tank
unit, some assorted 1/2 and 1/4 Loc-Line components, a Precise S 65 high
speed spindle (needs collets and collet nut), two DuMont Minuteman
keyway broach sets, a chucking reamer set, a tub of assorted slotting
and slitting saws and a big box of assorted aluminum hunks 1/4"-3" thick
or so.

sounds like Iggy best get going, he's got competition for best
scrounger.

Heh, I spent about $1,400 including diesel to go get it. If Iggy got it
he'd spend that much but it would all come pre-loaded in a nice box
truck with lift gate and low miles included in the deal.

Hey, we all get great deals, good deals, and not so good deals, myself
included. What's important is

1) Always pay not more than market price for what you need
2) Always pay a lot less than the market price for stuff to be resold
3) Not to have way too much stuff that it impedes movement or cash flow

You will get great use of that grinder.

i

The grinder is running as of last night, and purrs like a 70 year old
kitten

Very nice, I still have to fire up the Monarch

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
news

Quite often, the drive can no longer read the boot sector, and
keeps
trying to recalibrate the head positioner.

S.M.A.R.T shows a large seek error count, though they still work. I
keep using them until the Reallocated Sector Count rises or heat slows
them down excessively.

HD Tune (free) is a good drive health test program, though it can't
report the status of USB drives.
http://www.hdtune.com/

This lacks the tests but can read S.M.A.R.T from a USB drive.
http://crystalmark.info/software/Cry...o/index-e.html

jsw

On Thu, 13 Jun 2013 07:29:33 -0500, Ignoramus30848
wrote:

On 2013-06-13, wrote:
On Jun 12, 11:32?pm, Ignoramus21475 ignoramus21...@NOSPAM.
21475.invalid wrote:


Dan, fascinating story, I might give them a holler.

i

Bainbridge Island is not a great place for an observatory. Too many
cloudy days. But a lot of talented people there. They also built a
planetarium that is useable regardlesls of the weather.

I read somewhere, that due to light and air pollution, it is harder
and harder to find good places for observatories.

That's been true since the 1950s, Ig. I used to live an hour away
(35mi as the crow flies) from Palomar Mountain and, over the years,
there were lots of gripes from the crews (and people who knew them) up
at the telescope. As Escondido and Pauma Valley grew, light pollution
became more noticeable.

Since the 1970s, cities have attempted to mitigate their upward
shining lights with redesigned street lights, but paranoid citizens
just blast unrestrained light (in 500W chunks) all over their yards.
They think it keeps their home safe. Instead, it allows the criminals
to see everything. Morons. I'm glad I'm not bothered by light at
night because far too many of my neighbors over the years have left
porch or yard lights on at night, usually large and expensive-to-run
floods.

A whole lot of industrial lighting (such as that found at refineries)
has been redesigned since about then, too, but big cities (bright
lights in Vegas, NYC, Tokyo, etc.) just blow the skies away with their
brightness.

The Hubble/Spitzer/Kebler and other space telescopes really made
headway against the vagaries of atmosphere and reflected light.

I'm still ****ed every time I see thousands of watts of unrestrained
light blasting out at night, imagining how frustrating that must be to
real astronomers.

--
I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you
have earned, but it is not greed to want take someone else's money.
--Thomas Sowell

On Thu, 13 Jun 2013 05:48:14 GMT, "Harold & Susan Vordos"
wrote:


"Bob Engelhardt" wrote in message
...
On 6/11/2013 6:35 PM, Karl Townsend wrote:
... a real nice monster wench....

Kinky

Chuckle!

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing! ;-)

How much worse is that in the morning than waking up to Coyote Ugly?
I've only met one double bagger in my life. (That's where you put a
bag over her head when taking her to bed, and putting another one on
yourself, JUST in case hers comes off.)

--
I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you
have earned, but it is not greed to want take someone else's money.
--Thomas Sowell

On Thursday, June 13, 2013 3:24:46 PM UTC-4, Larry Jaques wrote:
On Thu, 13 Jun 2013 07:29:33 -0500, Ignoramus30848

wrote:



On 2013-06-13, wrote:

On Jun 12, 11:32?pm, Ignoramus21475 ignoramus21...@NOSPAM.

21475.invalid wrote:





Dan, fascinating story, I might give them a holler.



i



Bainbridge Island is not a great place for an observatory. Too many

cloudy days. But a lot of talented people there. They also built a

planetarium that is useable regardlesls of the weather.



I read somewhere, that due to light and air pollution, it is harder

and harder to find good places for observatories.



That's been true since the 1950s, Ig. I used to live an hour away

(35mi as the crow flies) from Palomar Mountain and, over the years,

there were lots of gripes from the crews (and people who knew them) up

at the telescope. As Escondido and Pauma Valley grew, light pollution

became more noticeable.



Since the 1970s, cities have attempted to mitigate their upward

shining lights with redesigned street lights, but paranoid citizens

just blast unrestrained light (in 500W chunks) all over their yards.

They think it keeps their home safe. Instead, it allows the criminals

to see everything. Morons. I'm glad I'm not bothered by light at

night because far too many of my neighbors over the years have left

porch or yard lights on at night, usually large and expensive-to-run

floods.



A whole lot of industrial lighting (such as that found at refineries)

has been redesigned since about then, too, but big cities (bright

lights in Vegas, NYC, Tokyo, etc.) just blow the skies away with their

brightness.



The Hubble/Spitzer/Kebler and other space telescopes really made

headway against the vagaries of atmosphere and reflected light.



I'm still ****ed every time I see thousands of watts of unrestrained

light blasting out at night, imagining how frustrating that must be to

real astronomers.



--

I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you

have earned, but it is not greed to want take someone else's money.

--Thomas Sowell

I saw one of those "How the hell do they do this Monster construction" shows a while back. They were installing a new sign in Times Square, NY. The project included installing an additional 4,000 Amp service, just for the signs on this building. I can't imagine a bigger waste. Really sick.

On Thu, 13 Jun 2013 12:24:46 -0700, Larry Jaques
wrote:

On Thu, 13 Jun 2013 07:29:33 -0500, Ignoramus30848
wrote:

On 2013-06-13, wrote:
On Jun 12, 11:32?pm, Ignoramus21475 ignoramus21...@NOSPAM.
21475.invalid wrote:


Dan, fascinating story, I might give them a holler.

i

Bainbridge Island is not a great place for an observatory. Too many
cloudy days. But a lot of talented people there. They also built a
planetarium that is useable regardlesls of the weather.

I read somewhere, that due to light and air pollution, it is harder
and harder to find good places for observatories.

That's been true since the 1950s, Ig. I used to live an hour away
(35mi as the crow flies) from Palomar Mountain and, over the years,
there were lots of gripes from the crews (and people who knew them) up
at the telescope. As Escondido and Pauma Valley grew, light pollution
became more noticeable.

Since the 1970s, cities have attempted to mitigate their upward
shining lights with redesigned street lights, but paranoid citizens
just blast unrestrained light (in 500W chunks) all over their yards.
They think it keeps their home safe. Instead, it allows the criminals
to see everything. Morons. I'm glad I'm not bothered by light at
night because far too many of my neighbors over the years have left
porch or yard lights on at night, usually large and expensive-to-run
floods.

A whole lot of industrial lighting (such as that found at refineries)
has been redesigned since about then, too, but big cities (bright
lights in Vegas, NYC, Tokyo, etc.) just blow the skies away with their
brightness.

The Hubble/Spitzer/Kebler and other space telescopes really made
headway against the vagaries of atmosphere and reflected light.

I'm still ****ed every time I see thousands of watts of unrestrained
light blasting out at night, imagining how frustrating that must be to
real astronomers.

I'm with you. My home isn't too bad, but when we were out in the
driveway the other night looking at Saturn and some Messier objects, I
went around and asked the neighbors within reach if they'd turn off
their outside lights. They all did, and it reduced the glare a lot.
No street lights out here. Couldn't do anything about the southern
horizon with Round Rock and Austin beyond the ridge. Light pollution
pretty much blotted out everything below about 30 deg. elevation.
There are some good dark sky sites not too far to the west. Must pack
up and get out there some day.

Pete Keillor

On 2013-06-13, Michael A. Terrell wrote:

Jim Wilkins wrote:

[ ... ]

Have you priced new IDE laptop drives?


That was a joke, Jim.

They haven't made many, or any for a few years now. Geeks.com had
piles of cheap 'refurbished' 2.5: PATA drives, but they only list one
right now. 80 GB for $35.

I just recently got a batch (60) of the 146 GB FC-AL interfaced
drives. I have a direct application for about half of them.

Unfortunately, they were from an IBM RAID setup, and had been
formatted with 520 byte sectors, instead of the standard 512 byte ones.

I've dealt with converting 36 GB and 73 GB ones with the same
problems, but these are fighting me all the way home.

I've been bouncing back and forth between Sun's Solaris 10 and
Ubuntu linux trying different tools to try to get them working. No luck
so far, though I have six converted to 512 byte sectors, they won't
accept a label, because the bad block tables are gone.

It would really be nice to have them usable, to replace the 36GB
and 73GB drives in various software RAID arrays.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Remove oil spill source from e-mail
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 13 Jun 2013 05:48:14 GMT, "Harold & Susan Vordos"
wrote:


"Bob Engelhardt" wrote in message
...
On 6/11/2013 6:35 PM, Karl Townsend wrote:
... a real nice monster wench....

Kinky

Chuckle!

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing! ;-)

How much worse is that in the morning than waking up to Coyote Ugly?
I've only met one double bagger in my life. (That's where you put a
bag over her head when taking her to bed, and putting another one on
yourself, JUST in case hers comes off.)


I tried to avoid the urge to gnaw off an arm after waking up in the
morning---did that by being selective when I was between wives. #2, the
current Mrs., has been a real gem. A definite keeper. 36 years this
month.

Harold

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
...

Jim Wilkins wrote:

"Michael A. Terrell" ? wrote in message
m...
? There are good and cheap SATA to PATA converters.

That fit into laptops?

I saw one to use a PATA DVD drive in a SATA laptop, but I don't
remember who was selling them.

For this Dell Latitude D series I have, the CD module bay accepts
either SATA or PATA hard drives in an adapter like this:
http://www.amazon.com/Optical-Drive-...67891&sr=1-357
The PATA ones are genuine Dell and fit in smoothly, the SATAs are
aftermarket and may need some rework to get them to plug in and
especially eject smoothly.

They are very nice for a home theater laptop whose primary drive would
otherwise rapidly fill up with recorded TV shows. I don't have a
suitable safe place in the living room to set up a desktop with its
keyboard and fragile external USB drives.

This week I set up another flea-market laptop as a TV for the bedroom,
with Avermedia's H837 USB tuner and MediaCenter 3D software. It
crashes more easily than Win 7 Media Center, but otherwise works at
least as well and has more features, like showing all the subchannels
simultaneously for stations that broadcast #.1, #.2, #.3.

For only a little more than the price of a tabletop HDTV it can
record, timeshift, wake up on a timer and run on batteries. The little
dipole antenna included with the tuner receives all the Boston
stations from southern NH.

jsw

"DoN. Nichols" wrote in message
...
...
Unfortunately, they were from an IBM RAID setup, and had been
formatted with 520 byte sectors, instead of the standard 512 byte
ones.

I've dealt with converting 36 GB and 73 GB ones with the same
problems, but these are fighting me all the way home.

I've been bouncing back and forth between Sun's Solaris 10 and
Ubuntu linux trying different tools to try to get them working. No
luck
so far, though I have six converted to 512 byte sectors, they won't
accept a label, because the bad block tables are gone.

It would really be nice to have them usable, to replace the 36GB
and 73GB drives in various software RAID arrays.

Enjoy,
DoN.

When I called drive support asking how to reset the P-list, to reclaim
spare sectors on the huge G-list, they said it could only be done on
their custom hardware, because of the embedded servo tracks I couldn't
access.

http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/hard-drive-defects-table/
"Although data operations are automatically redirected to uncorrupted
sectors, the G-list table does reduce drive access speed and it may
become necessary to replace the drive."

I think the drive slows down because the replacement sectors are on
different tracks so accessing them requires a head seek.

However the reformat that's part of installing Windows made a
Reallocated Sector Count of several hundred thousand disappear, and
the bad section no longer slows down in the HD Tune read speed
benchmark tests.

Radio Shack dumped their IOMega Prestige 1T USB drives recently for
$33.97. I found out why after buying one, they are Advanced Format
with 4k sectors and neither XP nor Win7 32bit would read it. But 7 x64
could, and once it had been cracked open so could the others.
jsw

On Fri, 14 Jun 2013 06:25:18 GMT, "Harold & Susan Vordos"
wrote:


"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
.. .
On Thu, 13 Jun 2013 05:48:14 GMT, "Harold & Susan Vordos"
wrote:


"Bob Engelhardt" wrote in message
...
On 6/11/2013 6:35 PM, Karl Townsend wrote:
... a real nice monster wench....

Kinky

Chuckle!

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing! ;-)

How much worse is that in the morning than waking up to Coyote Ugly?
I've only met one double bagger in my life. (That's where you put a
bag over her head when taking her to bed, and putting another one on
yourself, JUST in case hers comes off.)


I tried to avoid the urge to gnaw off an arm after waking up in the
morning---did that by being selective when I was between wives.

Slow learner, wot?



#2, the
current Mrs., has been a real gem. A definite keeper. 36 years this
month.

Congrats, 'Arry.

--
I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you
have earned, but it is not greed to want take someone else's money.
--Thomas Sowell

On 2013-06-14, Jim Wilkins wrote:
"DoN. Nichols" wrote in message
...
...
Unfortunately, they were from an IBM RAID setup, and had been
formatted with 520 byte sectors, instead of the standard 512 byte
ones.

I've dealt with converting 36 GB and 73 GB ones with the same
problems, but these are fighting me all the way home.

[ ... ]

It would really be nice to have them usable, to replace the 36GB
and 73GB drives in various software RAID arrays.

Enjoy,
DoN.

When I called drive support asking how to reset the P-list, to reclaim
spare sectors on the huge G-list, they said it could only be done on
their custom hardware, because of the embedded servo tracks I couldn't
access.

http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/hard-drive-defects-table/
"Although data operations are automatically redirected to uncorrupted
sectors, the G-list table does reduce drive access speed and it may
become necessary to replace the drive."

I think the drive slows down because the replacement sectors are on
different tracks so accessing them requires a head seek.

O.K. THe P-list must be what the Hitachi manual for the drives
describes as "skip"s. Each sector has information to move to the next
*good* sector, skipping over the intermediate bad ones.

The "G-list" is probably what Sun reserves two cylinders at the
end of the drive for -- a pool of spare sectors to use as needed to
replace sectors which go bad over time.

However the reformat that's part of installing Windows made a
Reallocated Sector Count of several hundred thousand disappear, and
the bad section no longer slows down in the HD Tune read speed
benchmark tests.

There's no way that I can use the Windows format to fix this,
however. the only systems which I Have with the FC-AL drive slots are
equipped with UltraSPARC CPUs, which Windows has no idea what to do
with. :-(

I guess that if I got a PCI card which was a host adaptor for
the FC-AL drives, (Fibre Channel -- Arbitrated List) and the proper
drivers, I could use a Windows box -- after converting a spare drive bay
(two slots) out of a damaged Sun Blade 1000 to hold the drives). I may
have to do that. Which flavor of Windows was this?


Radio Shack dumped their IOMega Prestige 1T USB drives recently for
$33.97. I found out why after buying one, they are Advanced Format
with 4k sectors and neither XP nor Win7 32bit would read it. But 7 x64
could, and once it had been cracked open so could the others.

USB isn't much use in the RAID arrays where I want to use these
drives.

Thanks,
DoN.

--
Remove oil spill source from e-mail
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

"DoN. Nichols" wrote in message
...
On 2013-06-14, Jim Wilkins wrote:
"DoN. Nichols" wrote in message
...
...
Unfortunately, they were from an IBM RAID setup, and had been
formatted with 520 byte sectors, instead of the standard 512 byte
ones.

I've dealt with converting 36 GB and 73 GB ones with the same
problems, but these are fighting me all the way home.

[ ... ]

It would really be nice to have them usable, to replace the 36GB
and 73GB drives in various software RAID arrays.

Enjoy,
DoN.

When I called drive support asking how to reset the P-list, to
reclaim
spare sectors on the huge G-list, they said it could only be done
on
their custom hardware, because of the embedded servo tracks I
couldn't
access.

http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/hard-drive-defects-table/
"Although data operations are automatically redirected to
uncorrupted
sectors, the G-list table does reduce drive access speed and it may
become necessary to replace the drive."

I think the drive slows down because the replacement sectors are on
different tracks so accessing them requires a head seek.

O.K. THe P-list must be what the Hitachi manual for the drives
describes as "skip"s. Each sector has information to move to the
next
*good* sector, skipping over the intermediate bad ones.

The "G-list" is probably what Sun reserves two cylinders at the
end of the drive for -- a pool of spare sectors to use as needed to
replace sectors which go bad over time.

However the reformat that's part of installing Windows made a
Reallocated Sector Count of several hundred thousand disappear, and
the bad section no longer slows down in the HD Tune read speed
benchmark tests.

There's no way that I can use the Windows format to fix this,
however. the only systems which I Have with the FC-AL drive slots
are
equipped with UltraSPARC CPUs, which Windows has no idea what to do
with. :-(

I guess that if I got a PCI card which was a host adaptor for
the FC-AL drives, (Fibre Channel -- Arbitrated List) and the proper
drivers, I could use a Windows box -- after converting a spare drive
bay
(two slots) out of a damaged Sun Blade 1000 to hold the drives). I
may
have to do that. Which flavor of Windows was this?

Thanks,
DoN.

Your problem is way above my pay grade. I fell (or was pushed) into
some SCSI once but wiggled out as qiuckly as I could.

IIRC it was Windows 2000. The MS CheckDisk utility with the /r switch
may be as good.

When I was using Sun workstations the IT department wouldn't let me
play around inside them, the fear in their eyes revealed that they
knew too well what I could do.
jsw the usurperuser

"DoN. Nichols" wrote in message
...


O.K. THe P-list must be what the Hitachi manual for the drives
describes as "skip"s. Each sector has information to move to the
next
*good* sector, skipping over the intermediate bad ones.

The "G-list" is probably what Sun reserves two cylinders at the
end of the drive for -- a pool of spare sectors to use as needed to
replace sectors which go bad over time.

This Russian knows his stuff!
http://hddscan.com/doc/HDD_Tracks_and_Zones.html

There's no way that I can use the Windows format to fix this,
however. the only systems which I Have with the FC-AL drive slots
are
equipped with UltraSPARC CPUs, which Windows has no idea what to do
with. :-(


Here is a good start for you.
http://code.duffy.jp/hard-drive-benchmark-for-linux/

I think the stalactites indicate G-list sectors that the head has to
move to before reading. The read block size affects the graph
sharpness, like the bandwidth controls on a spectrum analyzer. In
Windows the boot drive will show non-repeating spurious spikes when
the OS kernel preempts the drive.

It's typical for a hard drive to slow down considerably toward the
end, and a CD or DVD drive to ramp up. DVD-DLs give a peaked-roof
graph.
jsw

On 2013-06-14, Jim Wilkins wrote:
"DoN. Nichols" wrote in message
...
On 2013-06-14, Jim Wilkins wrote:
"DoN. Nichols" wrote in message
...
...
Unfortunately, they were from an IBM RAID setup, and had been
formatted with 520 byte sectors, instead of the standard 512 byte
ones.

[ ... ]

It would really be nice to have them usable, to replace the 36GB
and 73GB drives in various software RAID arrays.

Enjoy,
DoN.

When I called drive support asking how to reset the P-list, to
reclaim
spare sectors on the huge G-list, they said it could only be done
on
their custom hardware, because of the embedded servo tracks I
couldn't
access.

[ ... ]

O.K. THe P-list must be what the Hitachi manual for the drives
describes as "skip"s. Each sector has information to move to the
next
*good* sector, skipping over the intermediate bad ones.

The "G-list" is probably what Sun reserves two cylinders at the
end of the drive for -- a pool of spare sectors to use as needed to
replace sectors which go bad over time.

However the reformat that's part of installing Windows made a
Reallocated Sector Count of several hundred thousand disappear, and
the bad section no longer slows down in the HD Tune read speed
benchmark tests.

[ ... ]

I guess that if I got a PCI card which was a host adaptor for
the FC-AL drives, (Fibre Channel -- Arbitrated List) and the proper
drivers, I could use a Windows box -- after converting a spare drive
bay
(two slots) out of a damaged Sun Blade 1000 to hold the drives). I
may
have to do that. Which flavor of Windows was this?

[ ... ]

Your problem is way above my pay grade. I fell (or was pushed) into
some SCSI once but wiggled out as qiuckly as I could.

And this is FC-AL. It accepts the SCSI commands (so does IDE,
for the most part), but the hardware part of the interface is quite
different.

It has only two wires of input, and two of output, both
differential. It looks for its address on the data flowing through, and
if it is not for it, it lets it flow through to the next drive, for up
to 126 drives total in the chain. And it is faster than the fastest
SCSI.

Original SCSI was a 50-pin connector, with an 8-bit wide
bidirectional data path, and a few handshaking signals, plus a matching
ground for each data wire.

Wide SCSI is a 68-pin connector, and 16 data bits, but otherwise
pretty much the same. Except that it may also be HVD (High Voltge
Differential) or LVD (Low Voltage Differential). The latter can have
the plain (single-ended) drives connected and it will work, but it slows
down a bit. :-)

Then there is the SCA (Single Connector Access) which has an
80-pin wide connector, which gets the wide SCSI data though some of
those pins, the +5V and +12V power, and four wires to specify which SCSI
ID the drive will answer to. (It is determined by which socket it is
plugged into when there are multiple drives in a housing.) It is a
hot-swappable interface, unlike the others. The power pins make last or
break first when plugging in or unplugging.

The FC-AL is like the SCA, except that it is only a 40-pin
connector, and has seven wires to specify the SCSI address. Also
hot-swappable.

IIRC it was Windows 2000. The MS CheckDisk utility with the /r switch
may be as good.

O.K. I actually have a Windows 2000 system, and the install
media for it. All I need is the right card to allow it to talk to the
drives. :-) It's not like I'm using that system for anything else. :-)

When I was using Sun workstations the IT department wouldn't let me
play around inside them, the fear in their eyes revealed that they
knew too well what I could do.
jsw the usurperuser

Hmm ... At work, I was part of the SysAdmin team, and at home I
own all the Sun machines (purchased at hamfest and eBay prices --
certainly not new. :-)

I had already been playing with Sun workstations and servers at
home when they started that SysAdmin team. I'm retired now, so it is
all my machines (well ... except for the one which my wife uses. :-)

Thanks,
DoN.

--
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On 2013-06-15, Jim Wilkins wrote:
"DoN. Nichols" wrote in message
...


O.K. THe P-list must be what the Hitachi manual for the drives
describes as "skip"s. Each sector has information to move to the
next
*good* sector, skipping over the intermediate bad ones.

[ ... ]

This Russian knows his stuff!
http://hddscan.com/doc/HDD_Tracks_and_Zones.html

A very good page. Thanks. I did learn things, some of which
should have been obvious, but I had not considered them.

There's no way that I can use the Windows format to fix this,
however. the only systems which I Have with the FC-AL drive slots
are
equipped with UltraSPARC CPUs, which Windows has no idea what to do
with. :-(


Here is a good start for you.
http://code.duffy.jp/hard-drive-benchmark-for-linux/

Ouch! Linux 10.54, and I'm running 6.6.?, which appears to be
the last version to escape for the UltraSPARC 64-bit CPUs. This means
that I have to get a PCI interface FC-AL card to talk to the drives with
something newer.

But then, I'm not sure that a benchmark program would be much
help, anyway.

I think the stalactites indicate G-list sectors that the head has to
move to before reading. The read block size affects the graph
sharpness, like the bandwidth controls on a spectrum analyzer. In
Windows the boot drive will show non-repeating spurious spikes when
the OS kernel preempts the drive.

It's typical for a hard drive to slow down considerably toward the
end, and a CD or DVD drive to ramp up. DVD-DLs give a peaked-roof
graph.
jsw

Thanks,
DoN.

--
Remove oil spill source from e-mail
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
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"DoN. Nichols" wrote in message
...
On 2013-06-15, Jim Wilkins wrote:

Here is a good start for you.
http://code.duffy.jp/hard-drive-benchmark-for-linux/

Ouch! Linux 10.54, and I'm running 6.6.?, which appears to be
the last version to escape for the UltraSPARC 64-bit CPUs. This
means
that I have to get a PCI interface FC-AL card to talk to the drives
with
something newer.

But then, I'm not sure that a benchmark program would be much
help, anyway.

A graph of read speed is the best free quick test I've found to
determine the quality of used hard drives, or sample CDs and DVDs
before buying a big spindle. Any problem slows it down; it's like a
Check Engine light. I save the initial graphs to check for
deterioration later.

Rubtsov's HDD Scan program goes further and records the access time
and block number if it's over 50mS. That's good for serious repair
such as partitioning around a crash site, but the simpler HDTune type
is easier to use otherwise.
jsw

On Tue, 11 Jun 2013 19:08:11 -0500, "Pete C."
wrote:


Karl Townsend wrote:

My son just got a free 15" southbend from grandpa just for coming to
visit. Dad tossed in a 12" bench grinder, and a small pickup load of
tools, and a real nice monster wench. No small trip - MN to NM - 2K
miles.

Then "The Kid" just won this auction
http://auctions.machinesused.com/lis...mnum=846984426

Now he's surfing fleabay for a couple VFDs.

Karl

Why a couple of VFDs? You'll never use the hor and vert spindles at the
same time so one VFD will do fine for both.


The problem is turning them on and off. NEVER switch the output line
from a VFD..ever. Only switch the Input (power) TO the VFD

Doing it wrong lets out the magic smoke.


--
"You guess the truth hurts?

Really?

"Hurt" aint the word.

For Liberals, the truth is like salt to a slug.
Sunlight to a vampire.
Raid® to a cockroach.
Sheriff Brody to a shark
Bush to a Liberal

The truth doesn't just hurt. It's painful, like a red hot poker shoved
up their ass. Like sliding down a hundred foot razor blade using their
dick as a brake.

They HATE the truth."

On Tue, 11 Jun 2013 19:16:16 -0500, "Pete C."
wrote:


Karl Townsend wrote:

My son just got a free 15" southbend from grandpa just for coming to
visit. Dad tossed in a 12" bench grinder, and a small pickup load of
tools, and a real nice monster wench. No small trip - MN to NM - 2K
miles.

Then "The Kid" just won this auction
http://auctions.machinesused.com/lis...mnum=846984426

Now he's surfing fleabay for a couple VFDs.

Karl

I actually did pretty well over the weekend. I got a 1942 vintage 6x18
Norton surface grinder with hydraulic traverse and cross feed, a Brown
and Sharp mag chuck, a large selection of wheels and arbors, 5C spin
indexer, diamond dresser on a B&S mag base, small coolant pump/tank
unit, some assorted 1/2 and 1/4 Loc-Line components, a Precise S 65 high
speed spindle (needs collets and collet nut), two DuMont Minuteman
keyway broach sets, a chucking reamer set, a tub of assorted slotting
and slitting saws and a big box of assorted aluminum hunks 1/4"-3" thick
or so.

Keyway broach? (Perk!)

Need both of them or only one?


--
"You guess the truth hurts?

Really?

"Hurt" aint the word.

For Liberals, the truth is like salt to a slug.
Sunlight to a vampire.
Raid® to a cockroach.
Sheriff Brody to a shark
Bush to a Liberal

The truth doesn't just hurt. It's painful, like a red hot poker shoved
up their ass. Like sliding down a hundred foot razor blade using their
dick as a brake.

They HATE the truth."

On Tue, 11 Jun 2013 17:35:36 -0500, Karl Townsend
wrote:

My son just got a free 15" southbend from grandpa just for coming to
visit. Dad tossed in a 12" bench grinder, and a small pickup load of
tools, and a real nice monster wench. No small trip - MN to NM - 2K
miles.

Then "The Kid" just won this auction
http://auctions.machinesused.com/lis...mnum=846984426

Now he's surfing fleabay for a couple VFDs.

Karl

Ive got one of these

http://www.machinetools4sale.com/sho...sp?itemid=1594

I just need to figure out how to get it home. Damned thing is almost
9' tall

Gunner

--
"You guess the truth hurts?

Really?

"Hurt" aint the word.

For Liberals, the truth is like salt to a slug.
Sunlight to a vampire.
Raid® to a cockroach.
Sheriff Brody to a shark
Bush to a Liberal

The truth doesn't just hurt. It's painful, like a red hot poker shoved
up their ass. Like sliding down a hundred foot razor blade using their
dick as a brake.

They HATE the truth."

On 2013-06-15, Gunner Asch wrote:
On Tue, 11 Jun 2013 19:08:11 -0500, "Pete C."
wrote:


Karl Townsend wrote:

[ ... ]

Now he's surfing fleabay for a couple VFDs.

Karl

Why a couple of VFDs? You'll never use the hor and vert spindles at the
same time so one VFD will do fine for both.


The problem is turning them on and off. NEVER switch the output line
from a VFD..ever. Only switch the Input (power) TO the VFD

Doing it wrong lets out the magic smoke.

The trick is "never switch the output side of a VFD while it is
powering a motor. If it is halted, you can swithc over to another
motors before spinning it up again. (What you need is an interlock so
the VFD has to be at "halt" before you can switch to a new motor.) But
two VFDS are nicer, anyway.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Remove oil spill source from e-mail
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---