20 Jan
1998
20 Jan
'98
2:18 p.m.
as I was going through my parts today, i decided to test some 5 old mfm
controller cards I was given by someone at work. it turns out that 5 mfm hard
drives i have have gone "bad" again (they worked previously), and all 5
controller cards have failed. it seems the only drive combination i have that
works is a kalok drive, and a full size adaptec controller card that came in
the 286 im testing all these in. over the past year, i betcha i've bought and
thrown away almost 40 bad controller cards! the drives i know worked before,
so i can just call debug and low level them again. ive already tried cabling
combinations, jumper and bios settings, swapping known good parts out, and so
forth. has anyone else had a fantastic failure rate with mfm controller cards?
seems like i have better luck with reviving hard drives. incidentally, would
anyone know what the proper jumper settings would be for an 8bit mfm
controller card? one is a WD1002-27X and the other is a WD1002A-WX1. they are
similar in appearance, but minor changes in chip layout and jumper settings.
both these cards won't init a good hard drive.
david
20 Jan
20 Jan
12:54 p.m.
BIG SNIP!
david
David,
Kolak hd is not that great but if that is only that works with
those controllers you had, I'm surprised. BUT, you do NEED to low
level format not as assumed as you have with any hds to marry each
pair together because different controller cards aren't equal. This
is especially a must with either MFM, RLL and sometimes needed with
ESDI drives. Different scsi controllers resolves differently by
c/h/s presented to OSes which requires fdisk and high-level format,
low level format is not required. Ditto to IDE drives if the c/h/s
is not same as original specs when formatted or less than max
capacity of that IDE.
For XT controllers: Start the controller's built in bios with a
debug and a g=yyyy:x where yyyy is bios memory address and x is
offset, usually 5, 6, or 8. If you're using it in 16bit ISA slot,
leave the BIOS hd entry disabled or type 0. Some are so dumb that
requires manual to set the jumpers for different hd's, some are
user-defineable in either hex (!!) or decimal. Very few early xt
controllers fail to boot up in some computers. Once or
twice have happened. Not fun to resolve that, had to do weird
wizardy chants and bend backwards to make it work! :)
For AT controllers, it's 16bit and has no bios at all, set by the
BIOS hd specs either the type # or the user-defineable spec then
use either software to low level format it or if BIOS supports one,
use it.
Watch that any MFM or RLL controllers supported max interlave is set
to it's specs maybe one or two higher because most slow computer
still can't keep up with processing all those transfers but funny
thing, it did sped things up sometimes like that.
Then finish it with fdisk then format.
That SHOULD work with any hd's you can find.
Jason D.
email: jpero(a)cgo.wave.ca
Pero, Jason D.
6:27 p.m.
On Tue, 20 Jan 1998, SUPRDAVE wrote:
as I was going through my parts today, i decided to
test some 5 old mfm
controller cards I was given by someone at work. it turns out that 5 mfm hard
drives i have have gone "bad" again (they worked previously), and all 5
controller cards have failed. it seems the only drive combination i have that
works is a kalok drive, and a full size adaptec controller card that came in
the 286 im testing all these in. over the past year, i betcha i've bought and
thrown away almost 40 bad controller cards! the drives i know worked before,
so i can just call debug and low level them again. ive already tried cabling
combinations, jumper and bios settings, swapping known good parts out, and so
forth. has anyone else had a fantastic failure rate with mfm controller cards?
seems like i have better luck with reviving hard drives. incidentally, would
anyone know what the proper jumper settings would be for an 8bit mfm
controller card? one is a WD1002-27X and the other is a WD1002A-WX1. they are
similar in appearance, but minor changes in chip layout and jumper settings.
both these cards won't init a good hard drive.
Coming to you by private e-mail, David.
- don
donm(a)cts.com
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Don Maslin - Keeper of the Dina-SIG CP/M System Disk Archives
Chairman, Dina-SIG of the San Diego Computer Society
Clinging tenaciously to the trailing edge of technology.
Sysop - Elephant's Graveyard (CP/M) - 619-454-8412
*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*
see old system support at http://www.psyber.com/~tcj
9:06 p.m.
On Tue, 20 Jan 1998 20:18:55 EST, you said:
Ive already tried cabling
combinations, jumper and bios settings, swapping known good parts out, and so
forth. has anyone else had a fantastic failure rate with mfm controller cards?
seems like i have better luck with reviving hard drives. incidentally, would
anyone know what the proper jumper settings would be for an 8bit mfm
controller card? one is a WD1002-27X and the other is a WD1002A-WX1. they are
similar in appearance, but minor changes in chip layout and jumper settings.
both these cards won't init a good hard drive.
My two favorite tools for HD work are the "On-Track Disk Manager
program V 5", and "Hard Drive Test Specs" program. DM lets you test,
LL format, create, and prep partitions.
HDTS shows jumpers and specs for controllers and drives, if you don't
have the info you need, email me and I'll get it.
_______________
Barry Peterson bmpete(a)swbell.net
Husband to Diane, Father to Doug,
Grandfather to Zoe and Tegan.
22 Jan
22 Jan
2:59 a.m.
On Tue, 20 Jan 1998 20:18:55 EST, you said:
Hey, did you steal those "dm/m" program from me?! :) heh, just
kidding. That's what I use for this work. But HD test program to
sniff out hd? I'm frowning on it...use the deadwood or website for
correct specs, sometimes hd's lied to me. Well, where do you get this
HDTS only especially those jumper/specs? I'm trying to find enough
info as is...
Jason D.
_______________
Ive already tried cabling
combinations, jumper and bios settings, swapping known good parts out, and so
forth. has anyone else had a fantastic failure rate with mfm controller cards?
seems like i have better luck with reviving hard drives. incidentally, would
anyone know what the proper jumper settings would be for an 8bit mfm
controller card? one is a WD1002-27X and the other is a WD1002A-WX1. they are
similar in appearance, but minor changes in chip layout and jumper settings.
both these cards won't init a good hard drive.
My two favorite tools for HD work are the "On-Track Disk Manager
program V 5", and "Hard Drive Test Specs" program. DM lets you test,
LL format, create, and prep partitions.
HDTS shows jumpers and specs for controllers and drives, if you don't
have the info you need, email me and I'll get it.
Barry Peterson bmpete(a)swbell.net
Husband to Diane, Father to Doug,
Grandfather to Zoe and Tegan.
email: jpero(a)cgo.wave.ca
Pero, Jason D.
4:59 p.m.
On Thu, 22 Jan 1998 13:59:31 +0000, you said:
Hey, did you steal those "dm/m" program from
me?! :) heh, just
kidding. That's what I use for this work. But HD test program to
sniff out hd? I'm frowning on it...use the deadwood or website for
correct specs, sometimes hd's lied to me. Well, where do you get this
HDTS only especially those jumper/specs? I'm trying to find enough
info as is...
I use DM version 5.0; a general-purpose version that doesn't require
the /m.
HDTS is, AFAIK, not shareware. By Octagon Micro Devices, Inc. USA. It
was on a computer I bought at auction and has CHS, un/formatted
capacities, form factor, power consumption, interface, and other info
about drives. It also has some controller info, but not a lot,
including a line-graphic picture showing where jumpers and connectors
are.
_______________
Barry Peterson bmpete(a)swbell.net
Husband to Diane, Father to Doug,
Grandfather to Zoe and Tegan.
9660
days inactive
9662
days old
5 comments
4 participants
participants (4)
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bmpete＠swbell.net -
donm＠cts.com -
jpero＠cgo.wave.ca -
SUPRDAVE＠aol.com