sick disk

[Spock <Spock@samson.cadr.dialnet.symbolics.com>]

    Date: Tue, 13 Sep 88 16:04:25 CDT
    From: walls%ssl.span@Fedex.Msfc.Nasa.Gov

    Greetings!  I wonder if someone could help me.  My 3620 has gone belly
    up, and has been that way for a while.  At power on, the FEP prompt comes
    up fine, and the disk makes its normal(?) awful noises.  When I try to do
    a HELLO, though, the machine comes back with a "Drive not ready during unit
    select" and goes no further.  This is on a 3620 with two Maxor XT-2190
    190 MB drives and a tape drive.

    Call maintenance, right?  Well, due to an administrative error, our maint-
    enance contract has lapsed.  I described the problem to Symbolics, and the
    prognosis was a probable bad control board.  They quoted $3000 plus the 
    service call to come fix it.  Here's the deal-- our local maintenance people
    have the same disk drive on hand (same rev and everything) and can get what-
    ever is wrong with the drive fixed for under $1500 (or replace it, for that
    matter).  Do I have everything I need but the knowhow to format the new
    disk and bring the machine back up from tape, or a networked machine?  Would
    I be risking destroying the new disk drive by putting it in?

    Also, what about installing my own second drive in my single drive 3620.
    Are such user mods a serious no no?  That machine is still under maintenance.

Good luck!  I've been down this road before and symbolics doesn't let
out their disk formatting software (unless they've drastically changed
policy recently).  So, symbolics users have to pay double for their
disks.  symbolics ought to get out of the hardware business.