Stock IBM XT low level format program wanted

On Tue, 5 Jul 2005 14:46:01 -0400 "Degnan Co." <websupport at degnanco.com> wrote: Low level formatting a drive on a Xebec card doesn't involve using Debug to 'jump into' a textmode utility as it does for Western Digital 8 bit cards and many other PC-XT cards. For the Xebec card, there are specific I/O registers to write values into and read values back from. You can do this using the 'in' and 'out' commands in debug to read and write to those ports manually, or you can use the aformentioned IBM utility. {You could probably work up something 'spiffy' using Basic if you wanted.) I've never used the IBM utility, and used to have the write/read details. It's a nerve-wracking procedure, because you have to blindly do a bunch of in and out commands with debug, then after a few, the hard drive light comes on and it runs the format. Then after awhile, the drive light goes out and there's a register you can read to verify it worked. I remember that the tech ref for the Xebec card should list the I/O instruction set (i.e. the config registers, and what 'commands' are issued by issuing I/O commands to where,) and at one point I remember 'reverse engineering' the Debug In/Out sequence I had and figuring out exactly what each write accomplished.