5 Apr
2005
5 Apr
'05
10:55 a.m.
Replying to a bundle of posts again:
If you have an MFM drive used on an AT or better you
have a good chance of
reading it on any AT or better system with most any controller.
RLL or 8 bit based systems have no such "standard".
I think this is the best summary of the situation I've seen yet.
A terminator is also required at the last drive in the
chain. Assuming
you are using just one drive, not having the terminator installed would
probably cause the drive not to work properly.
Yeah, both drives have terminators. One of the Miniscribe drives
doesn't have a terminator but I remembered to move it when I tried that
drive.
If you are using a HD that originally had a twist, the
jumper select
will most likely be set to drive 1. Using a straight cable will cause
the drive to appear as drive D instead of C ... I don't remember what
problems that will cause. So if using a straight cable, make sure the
drive select is at 0 (of 0-3) or 1 (of 1-4).
That's where it appears to be on both Seagate drives.
If you are using an 8-bit card with the bios enabled,
make sure in the
386 setup that there is NO HD installed (the bios will take care of it.)
Yup, did that.
If you are trying to save files on the HD AND it was
installed with an
8-bit controller, you don't have any choices but to use the 8-bit card
bios to access the data AND an identical controller to the one that was
used to low level format the drive. Fred can probably comment on whether
it has to be the same type of controller, or the same controller for
this to work. If you have any idea of what the original machine it came
out of was, that would help :).
Here is the machine that the MFM drive came out of:
http://docs.van-diepen.com/th99/m/I-L/30739.htm
Intelligent Data Systems PC-88
Finally, the clicking you hear on the drive is not a
good sign. I would
power up the drive with no cables connected (except of course the power
cable) and if the clicking still continues, the drive is probably bad.
Clicking only happens when I've connected it to one of the 16-bit
controllers and the BIOS is attempting to find the disk. Otherwise the
drives sound fine.
If it is important enough, you could also send the
drive to a data
recovery service and leave it to them to deal with it.
Not really important, but the drives used to be in BBS systems in the
early 90's and we are quite interested in the files and messages that
are on there for archival purposes.
A few times I've seen different PC controllers
from the same manufacturer
(i.e. WD or whatever) work from one model to another but not be able to boot
without a low-level formatting (booting from a floppy allows access).
Now *this* is interesting. I was assuming that if the drive was going
to work at all, it would be bootable too. Why is is that you wouldn't
be able to boot from the drive, yet you'd be able to read it if you
booted from some other media?
As was pointed out if you know the drives were
formatted on a 8 bit
controller just set the BIOS to no hard drive and don't even try the 16 bit
controllers, they would just be a waste of time. Your best bet would be to
try different 8 bit cards and boot to a floppy then do a "dir c:", repeat
until you've tried all cards.
Okay, will do.
Does the controller require a real 8 bit machine, yes
not all 8 bit
controllers even worked in 16 bit computers.
Any examples of problem controllers in this area?
Is the drive bad.
Has the drive formatting been messed up.
Hoping not :(
Is the drive terminated properly.
Is the drive jumpered properly.
As far as I can tell, yes.
On IDE all of the truly low level stuff is 100% hidden
so the only
compatibility problems with IDE tended to be drive geometry (early problems
when the same drive could be addressed by different geometries) .
Yeah, I had a Fujitsu IDE drive die on me recently. I was able to get
the data by swapping the drive PCB with that of another drive which was
the same model, but not identical (6 months newer, different stuff on
the label). I was surprised that it actually worked.
--
Ryan Underwood, <nemesis at icequake.net>
5 Apr
5 Apr
11:45 a.m.
From: "Ryan Underwood" <nemesis-lists at icequake.net>
Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2005 12:55 PM
<snip>
I have no idea why just something I had run into, as I remember it was
between two WD cards, one 3/4 length vard vs. 1/2 length card.
Sometimes the only answer I had was just because, I never had technical
manuals on the cards and I just used them "blind" accepting that they do
what they do. The problem turned up when I replaced a bad controller, I
tested it back and forth to try and figure out how to make one boot when
formatted from the other but never got it to.
<snip>
I have one around somewher, an Adaptec 8 bit only RLL controller I know DTC
had some 8 bit only I'm sure there are others.
You can test your controllers by using a drive you know is good but you are
not interested in the data and try formatting it and using it with your
controllers (very time consuming since you have to format for each
controller). Doing this will verify that everything minus the hard drive is
OK.
<snip>
Once people get used to an IDE just plugging in and working we tend to
forget the problems of classic systems hard drives :)
Randy
www.s100-manuals.com
A few times
I've seen different PC controllers from the same manufacturer
(i.e. WD or whatever) work from one model to another but not be able to
boot
without a low-level formatting (booting from a floppy allows access).
Now *this* is interesting. I was assuming that if the drive was going
to work at all, it would be bootable too. Why is is that you wouldn't
be able to boot from the drive, yet you'd be able to read it if you
booted from some other media? Does the
controller require a real 8 bit machine, yes not all 8 bit
controllers even worked in 16 bit computers.
Any examples of problem controllers in this area? On IDE all of
the truly low level stuff is 100% hidden so the only
compatibility problems with IDE tended to be drive geometry (early
problems
when the same drive could be addressed by different geometries) .
Yeah, I had a Fujitsu IDE drive die on me recently. I was able to get
the data by swapping the drive PCB with that of another drive which was
the same model, but not identical (6 months newer, different stuff on
the label). I was surprised that it actually worked.
--
Ryan Underwood, <nemesis at icequake.net>
7201
days inactive
7201
days old
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