On 07/05/2007 03:05, Charles H. Dickman wrote:
  I am looking for the source listings for the RQDX3
disk formatting
 utility ZRQC from XXDP. I am wondering if they are part of the
 diagnostic micro-fiches. I think there are a couple people on the list
 with copies of the fiches. 
I've got the fiche, but no way to scan it or print it :-(  The listing
is quite long.
  I want to try formatting some non-DEC hard drives. A
search of the web
 shows that some have been successful in patching the drive description
 tables to format a drive with non-standard geometry, but I think getting
 the parameters for Bad Block Replacement right is the tough part. Maybe
 the formatter sources will help. 
I've done that, a long time ago (1991).  I can't remember the details,
but I recall I had to understand a whole lot of things in the table that
the formatter uses.  Something like 34 entries, not just half a dozen.
Some are easy, of course, like number of heads, cylinders; some are easy
to copy from other entries, like the gap lengths; some aren't hard to
work out, like the "media word" which is an encoded version of the drive
name.  It gets a bit more interesting if you try to do the same with the
tables in the RQDX2 ROMs, which I also did.  And the RQDX2 ROMs contain
a checksum :-(
--
Pete                                            Peter Turnbull
                                                Network Manager
                                                University of York