Help Needed: Kaypro 10 HDD Problems

From: Allison J Parent <allisonp_at_world.std.com>
Date: Tue May 12 09:03:30 1998

< If all else fails you may want to try a low level format on the hard
< drive. Boot with a MS-Dos ver 2.10 or later, run debug. At the '_'
< prompt type in g=c800:5 which should access the controller rom and
< enable you to low level format (it is <crudely> menu driven). Your
< Tandon has 306 cylinders, 4 heads and 17 sectors per track. After the
< low level format procede with the high level partitioning and
< formatting.
<
Marty

That would work if it were a dos box. It's a kaypro CP/M machine with
hard disk via host adaptor.

However, in all likelyhood there are bad sectors on the drive and a
FORMAT of the drive may clear the errors. The problem is that you need
the floppies with the disk utilities to do that and restore the OS back to
the disk (never minding all the other stuff on it). Unlike dos when I say
FORMAT I mean literally a low level format of the media. This unlike the
dos initializing of the media to dos file system. Formattig the media
will erase all the data and files so if you didn't backup, you loose.

How do the bad sectors arise? Heat, age and centrifical force assuming
there were no mechanical or electrical events to munge the media. The
older ST506/412 and similar drives tended to need a low level format from
time to time over their mechanical life.

Allison
Received on Tue May 12 1998 - 09:03:30 BST