MFM drives

From: jpero_at_cgo.wave.ca <(jpero_at_cgo.wave.ca)>
Date: Tue Jan 20 17:54:30 1998

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_at_cgo.wave.ca
Pero, Jason D.
Received on Tue Jan 20 1998 - 17:54:30 GMT