3 Feb
2023
3 Feb
'23
9:09 a.m.
Decided to spend some time working on my 11/73 with MFM drives.
Currently it has one of my RQDX3 boards (I have 3, 1 in attic), a 40mb
ST412 drive (the half height Seagate whatever) which works fine. No
issues there.
I'm trying to format an RD54 compatible drive and am running into major
issues. First, my two RWDX3's have different ROM dates, the old one is
1986 and the new one is 1990. This is important because I can't boot
RX33 disk images with my GoTek using the old card but I can using the
new one.
Question: I'm guessing the old ROMs only supported RX50 disks? Or is it
a secret jumper setting.
Anyway I do have both RX33 and RX50 versions of XXDP so not a big issue.
On to formatting.
The old controller (which I used for the 40mb Seagate) had pins 2-3
jumpered on W23. With that the RD54 was able to autoformat but then
would crash xxdp as soon as the initial format was done. Odd. So I used
the new controller with 1-2 and 3-4 jumpered. Same problem. Then I tried
having 1-2 jumpered and did a manual format (not autoformat, select
RD54, etc)
I noticed that on the old board it would ask me for the date when doing
this kind of format, on the new board it would just ask me for the
serial number. Odd.
Question: Is the ZRQCH0.BIN file calling different routines in the RQDX3
ROM?
Anyway after this the drive would format but then do endless seek errors
on the "read" portion of the disk check. Two drives did this, so it's
probably not the drives. Odd. Putting the drives on the Dave Gesswin MFM
reader showed all cylinders could be read.
Question: Can Dave G's board be used to low level format an RD54? Can it
test physical disk for errors (wasn't sure)
Now the drives only format for a minute or two before throwing errors.
Looks like something is very confused on XXDP. Not going to try any
other disks until I figure this out.
Thoughts? Different sites say different things about the RQDX3 jumpers,
some say to jumper 2-3 to allow more than 7 heads, some say to jumper
pins 1-2 and some say jumper pins 1-2 on "early ROM" and 1-2 3-4 on
"later ROM".
This is a serious pain, but just what settings should be done to allow
low level formatting, and did my previous attempts to low level wedge
these disks from the RQDX3 point of view? Can I do a low level wipe with
Dave Gesswin's board/software?
Thanks!
Chris