16 Feb
2014
16 Feb
'14
12:57 p.m.
On 02/15/2014 07:10 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 02/15/2014 04:12 PM, Jules Richardson wrote:
I have days like that, too...
Just curious as to what the expert opinion is on this - I've got a
ST412-type drive here (it's a Miniscribe with 615/4/17 ~20MB geometry)
which refuses to read from cylinders 128-255 or cylinders 384-511 -
giving address mark not found errors - although cylinders outside those
two ranges are fine.
ST506/412 controllers typically don't have a lot of smarts. Have you tried low-level formatting the drive?
No, not yet - I'm trying to salvage what I can off it first. The
controller's a Xebec ISA board which is almost identical to the 'variation
#3' board here: http://www.minuszerodegrees.net/ibm_xebec/ibm_xebec.htm
with the exception that mine has solder pads for selecting DMA / IRQ and
jumpers for I/O and ROM address, but otherwise appears to be the same. As
there's a link to the board schematics and programming information there,
it's possible that I might be able to do some further diagnosis on the
controller side.
Unfortunately I don't have a spare drive which I can attempt a format on,
but if one ever falls into my lap I can give that a go, too.
I wonder if all Xebec boards use the same track format? I do have some
SCSI<->STxxx bridge boards in storage overseas, so maybe I can try one of
those when they eventually join me on this side of the pond. (I think a few
years ago someone was attempting to document compatibilities between
different STxxx controller boards, but I don't know if anything ever came
of it)
cheers
Jules