HH drives

From: Alan Greenstreet <aeg_at_paradise.net.nz>
Date: Sun Apr 13 17:49:01 2003

On Sunday, Apr 13, 2003, at 21:50 Pacific/Auckland, Rob O'Donnell wrote:

> I've used a number of Wyse 286 & 386 machines in the past (as
> servers). Early machines did not have a BIOS configuration program
> built in - you had to boot a setup floppy. (I *might* still have one
> kicking about somewhere in the old discs at the office, if you need
> it; might also have some manuals.) If the battery went, then you need
> to set it up again.

This machine has no BIOS that I can interrogate (I got the date from
running scandisk from a later version of MSDOS) - On boot-up (using the
floppy) it is asking for a Setup Disk (this could be what you mention
above). I don't have this disk so if you can find it I'd like a copy...
>
> They mostly used fixed disc parameters, from which you selected the
> one closest to your drive, and with no "user definable" mode. I also
> had a lot of disc failures in those days. (I remember one
> particularly memorable day trying to read that one last sector off a
> dead disc on an old machine, in desperation dropping the machine 3",
> upside down, timed exactly right - and it read it!)

Ouch!
>
> Discs were usually st306? Three cables from a controller to the discs
> - one shared between drives, one each per drive. Floppy drives run
> from same controller. Seperate cards for Parallel+Serial (or parallel
> + 2 serial) video, etc.

Mine has an st-251-1 and an unbranded model installed and there appears
to be one controller for both the hard drives and the floppy disks. It
also has a 5.25" and a 3.5" floppy drives installed. Internally the
machine is in good condition but from the outside it looks as if it has
had a hard life. I was trying to get it up and running to use it as a
test bed for other MFM controlled disks (as it has two HD bays and 3 FD
bays).
>
> Has yours got that natty (but impractical) LCD display on the front?

Yes! What was that for? It doesn't appear to be working at the moment
(it does power up) - I am assuming that once the Setup disk is run this
might come back to life?
>
> regards
>
> Rob.
Thanks for the info
Alan
Received on Sun Apr 13 2003 - 17:49:01 BST