Ref: 10860022
Title: One cause for "Disk Format Bad" message on 3Server LCD
Date: 7/28/88

Copyright 3Com Corporation, 1991.  All rights reserved.

I had a lot of trouble getting 3+ loaded on a 3Server recently.
I reformatted the disk, established  new 3Console connections,
and loaded the software about 6 or 7 times.  I tried 3+ 1.2.1 and
3+ 1.2.  Each time I booted the server with the thumbwheel switch
in position 0, the LCD said "Disk Format Bad" right after the
PROM version and memory size messages.  NOTE: I held the strobe
switch in when pressing reset so that the long POST did not run.

I finally corrected the problem by accident when I pressed the reset
button and walked away from the server for a while.  When I got back,
the server had loaded!

The problem was that I had ALWAYS used the strobe button in
conjunction with reset to shorten the self test.  Something is
not getting reset by doing that that does get reset when the long
POST is run.  Prior to this, the only time I would do the long
POST was after a power-on boot, when the RAMs have to be
"scrubbed" to make all the parity bits correct.

The only thing that was unusual about this situation was that I had
previously formatted the disk as a 50 cylinder disk using an RLL
controller.  To prepare the server for this software I turned it off,
removed the RLL controller, installed the standard ACB4000A (ST 506
MFM) controller, turned the machine on, waited for the long POST to
complete, established a 3Console, and completely formatted the disk.
After that, I always used the strobe button when re-booting the
machine (until the discovery).
