On 09/30/2017 04:12 PM, Tom Gardner via cctalk wrote:
> I think Chuck has it backwards, AT Attachment as defined by the ANSI
> committee publically predates IDE. Although IDE was used internally at WD
> it did not surface publically until well after the ANSI committee adopted AT
> Attachment, abbr
On Sat, 30 Sep 2017, Tom Gardner via cctalk wrote:
I think Chuck has it backwards, AT Attachment as defined by the ANSI
committee publically predates IDE. Although IDE was used internally at WD
it did not surface publically until well after the ANSI committee adopted AT
Attachment, abbreviated A
. Booting would be a
problem and so would capacity but it should talk.
So Serial ATA makes sense to me
Tom
-Original Message-
From: Chuck Guzis [mailto:ccl...@sydex.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2017 5:37 PM
To: cctalk@classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: formatting MFM drives on a IBM PC
On 09/29/2017 06:42 PM, Peter Corlett via cctalk wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 29, 2017 at 01:08:24PM -0700, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
>>> On 09/29/2017 11:20 AM, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote:
> [...]
>>> Older BIOS firmware provided no means for the user to define the geometry of
>>> a connected drive - j
On Fri, Sep 29, 2017 at 01:08:24PM -0700, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
>> On 09/29/2017 11:20 AM, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote:
[...]
>> Older BIOS firmware provided no means for the user to define the geometry of
>> a connected drive - just a list of predefined types, and those often maxed
>> out at
On 9/29/2017 9:54 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
On 09/29/2017 07:04 PM, Warner Losh via cctalk wrote:
I think there are two barriers to that. No sata is a cards. And BIOS of
that era still required you to tell it the chs for the drive...
So, let's change the acronym to SSATA - "Serial Sort
On 09/29/2017 07:04 PM, Warner Losh via cctalk wrote:
> I think there are two barriers to that. No sata is a cards. And BIOS of
> that era still required you to tell it the chs for the drive...
So, let's change the acronym to SSATA - "Serial Sort-of AT Attachment"
--Chuck
On Sep 29, 2017 6:49 AM, "Peter Corlett via cctalk"
wrote:
On Thu, Sep 28, 2017 at 05:36:40PM -0700, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
[...]
> What I find perplexing is the acronym "SATA" for "Serial ATA". The name
would
> imply that a drive can be connected to a 5170, but I'm not aware of any
SATA
>
- Original Message -
From: "Ali via cctalk"
To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'"
Sent: Friday, September 29, 2017 5:31 PM
Subject: RE: formatting MFM drives on a IBM PC
> And, that won't work, either. The BIOS in older machin
> And, that won't work, either. The BIOS in older machines will not work
> right at ALL with a high capacity drive.
> In some cases you will get a usable volume with vastly reduced
> capacity, but in most cases it will just not recognize the drive at
> all. I'm not talking about original AT's her
"Low level format" is pretty much a relic of the old non-servo MFM
drives. I recall that early Maxtor IDE drives implemented a LLF
On Fri, 29 Sep 2017, Christian Corti via cctalk wrote:
Lowlevel formatting has to be done for *all* ST-506 interface drives (e.g.
"MFM" and "RLL" drives). It is t
On 09/29/2017 11:20 AM, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote:
I can only imagine a real AT would be even less likely to handle a drive
over about 40 MB.
40MB would not be much of a problem.
DOS, through 3.30 had a limit of 32MB per partition, but you could upgrade
to newer DOS, or break it up into multi
For what it's worth, I found long ago that the IDE interface was far
closer to the PC-based ESDI controller command set than the WD MFM drive
one. ESDI even responds to commands such as IDENTIFY, where that
command doesn't exist in the WD1003-type controller vocabulary. ESDI
also supports larger
> On Sep 29, 2017, at 10:35 AM, Jules Richardson via cctalk
> wrote:
>
> On 09/29/2017 11:20 AM, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote:
>> I can only imagine a real AT would be even less likely to handle a drive
>> over about 40 MB.
>
> I think the limit was normally 512MB in the old c/h/s addressing day
On 09/29/2017 11:20 AM, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote:
I can only imagine a real AT would be even less likely to handle a drive
over about 40 MB.
I think the limit was normally 512MB in the old c/h/s addressing days,
wasn't it? For a connected drive, the BIOS set aside 4 bits for the number
of h
On 09/29/2017 10:46 AM, Mike Stein via cctalk wrote:
- Original Message -
From: "Chuck Guzis via cctalk"
To: "Paul Koning" ; "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic
Posts"
Sent: Friday, September 29, 2017 11:29 AM
Subject: Re: formatting MFM drives o
> On Sep 29, 2017, at 11:29 AM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
>
> On 09/29/2017 06:07 AM, Paul Koning wrote:
>
>> There are chips that convert between serial and parallel ATA; one of
>> those could perhaps be used. I'm more used to applying them for
>> attaching a serial ATA controller to a parallel ATA
On Fri, Sep 29, 2017 at 3:05 AM, Christian Corti via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
> On Thu, 28 Sep 2017, Geoffrey Oltmans wrote:
>
>> Speaking of I've got a couple of old MFM drives (10 and 20 MB of a
>> variety whose name and model #'s escape me, I wanna say Tandon, but not
>> sure)
- Original Message -
From: "Chuck Guzis via cctalk"
To: "Paul Koning" ; "General Discussion: On-Topic and
Off-Topic Posts"
Sent: Friday, September 29, 2017 11:29 AM
Subject: Re: formatting MFM drives on a IBM PC
> On 09/29/2017 06:07 AM, Paul Koning
On 09/29/2017 01:11 AM, Christian Corti via cctalk wrote:
> I don't consider writing servo information as lowlevel formatting.
I should have been more precise. What I meant was "embedded servo".
Most, if not all, modern drives use this technique rather than dedicate
a separate surface to servo.
On Thu, Sep 28, 2017 at 7:36 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
> What I find perplexing is the acronym "SATA" for "Serial ATA". The name
> would imply that a drive can be connected to a 5170, but I'm not aware
> of any SATA adapters for the 5170 PC/AT.
>
I'm sure you'r
On 09/29/2017 06:07 AM, Paul Koning wrote:
> There are chips that convert between serial and parallel ATA; one of
> those could perhaps be used. I'm more used to applying them for
> attaching a serial ATA controller to a parallel ATA drive, but
> possibly they might work in the other direction as
> On Sep 28, 2017, at 8:36 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk
> wrote:
>
> On 09/28/2017 05:12 PM, Jules Richardson via cctalk wrote:
>> On 09/27/2017 09:59 AM, Ethan via cctalk wrote:
>>> The idea of IDE, as my understanding, is the controller that existed
>>> as an
>>> ISA card was moved onto the act
On Thu, Sep 28, 2017 at 05:36:40PM -0700, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
[...]
> What I find perplexing is the acronym "SATA" for "Serial ATA". The name would
> imply that a drive can be connected to a 5170, but I'm not aware of any SATA
> adapters for the 5170 PC/AT.
SATA has a different electrica
On Thu, 28 Sep 2017, Chuck Guzis wrote:
"Low level format" is pretty much a relic of the old non-servo MFM
drives. I recall that early Maxtor IDE drives implemented a LLF
Lowlevel formatting has to be done for *all* ST-506 interface drives (e.g.
"MFM" and "RLL" drives). It is the disk contro
On Thu, 28 Sep 2017, Geoffrey Oltmans wrote:
Speaking of I've got a couple of old MFM drives (10 and 20 MB of a
variety whose name and model #'s escape me, I wanna say Tandon, but not
sure). They seem to work fine when I initially format and partition, but as
they run for a while, they get mo
: formatting MFM drives on a
IBM PC)
prolly a failing ic of some sort?
On Thu, Sep 28, 2017 at 11:21 AM, Geoffrey Oltmans via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 28, 2017 at 11:17 AM, Al Kossow via cctalk <
> cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
> >
> >
&
On 09/28/2017 06:03 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
> For a little while, there were also available some 8 bit IDE cards
> and drives! I think that Compaq may have been the first customer for
> the Western Digital IDE "Integrated Drive Electronics"
Yup, it's sometimes called XTA. Very differen
On 2017-09-28 10:03 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
On Thu, 28 Sep 2017, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
IDE used to be called "ATA" - "AT Attachment"; i.e. something tailored
to the PC AT (5170) 16-bit ISA bus.
For a little while, there were also available some 8 bit IDE cards and
drives!
I
On Thu, 28 Sep 2017, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
IDE used to be called "ATA" - "AT Attachment"; i.e. something tailored
to the PC AT (5170) 16-bit ISA bus.
For a little while, there were also available some 8 bit IDE cards and
drives!
I think that Compaq may have been the first customer for
On 09/28/2017 05:12 PM, Jules Richardson via cctalk wrote:
> On 09/27/2017 09:59 AM, Ethan via cctalk wrote:
>> The idea of IDE, as my understanding, is the controller that existed
>> as an
>> ISA card was moved onto the actual drive, and then what became the
>> controller was mostly just extending
On 09/27/2017 09:59 AM, Ethan via cctalk wrote:
The idea of IDE, as my understanding, is the controller that existed as an
ISA card was moved onto the actual drive, and then what became the
controller was mostly just extending the ISA bus over to the drive.
I actually have an IDE "controller" s
- Original Message -
From: "Al Kossow via cctalk"
To:
Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2017 12:17 PM
Subject: Re: formatting MFM drives on a IBM PC
>
>
> On 9/28/17 7:38 AM, Mike Stein via cctalk wrote:
>
>> What is it that usually fails when the drive ca
- Original Message -
From: "Guy Sotomayor Jr via cctalk"
Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2017 12:30 PM
Subject: Re: formatting MFM drives on a IBM PC
> Generally drives now-a-days will read an entire track at a time.
>TTFN - Guy
--
Cromemco's STDC ST41
> On Sep 28, 2017, at 12:04 PM, Jon Elson via cctalk
> wrote:
>
> On 09/28/2017 10:31 AM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
>> And even the sector size on recent drives is fictitious. Larger drives use
>> 4K sectors but "translate" them to the 512 byte standard.
> So, for every write, it needs to
prolly a failing ic of some sort?
On Thu, Sep 28, 2017 at 11:21 AM, Geoffrey Oltmans via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 28, 2017 at 11:17 AM, Al Kossow via cctalk <
> cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > On 9/28/17 7:38 AM, Mike Stein via cctalk wrote:
> >
> > > What
> On Sep 28, 2017, at 9:04 AM, Jon Elson via cctalk
> wrote:
>
> On 09/28/2017 10:31 AM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
>> And even the sector size on recent drives is fictitious. Larger drives use
>> 4K sectors but "translate" them to the 512 byte standard.
> So, for every write, it needs to r
On 9/28/17 10:21 AM, Geoffrey Oltmans wrote:
On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 11:16 AM, allison via cctalk
mailto:cctalk@classiccmp.org>> wrote:
IDE disks format usually meant high level only. SCSI could be
either depnding on the specific controller and media.
Seems like the omission o
On Thu, Sep 28, 2017 at 11:17 AM, Al Kossow via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
>
> On 9/28/17 7:38 AM, Mike Stein via cctalk wrote:
>
> > What is it that usually fails when the drive can't read the servo info?
> The data on the platter, or?
>
> I've never dug that far into it beyond fidd
On 9/28/17 7:38 AM, Mike Stein via cctalk wrote:
> What is it that usually fails when the drive can't read the servo info? The
> data on the platter, or?
I've never dug that far into it beyond fiddling with Micropolis trying to
mechanically get it to
find the servo tracks and calibrate to tra
On 09/28/2017 10:31 AM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
And even the sector size on recent drives is fictitious.
Larger drives use 4K sectors but "translate" them to the
512 byte standard.
So, for every write, it needs to read the 4K sector, alter
the bytes and then rewrite it? Hmmm, explains wh
On 09/28/2017 07:34 AM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:
> Most drives 40mb and up are closed-loop with dedicated
> servo surfaces and many have servos that don't work any more.
>
> Maxtor and Atasi are early examples of embedded servo drives.
> You can tell if a drive is embedded or dedicated by the
On 27 September 2017 at 20:25, Fred Cisin via cctalk
wrote:
> On Wed, 27 Sep 2017, Liam Proven wrote:
>>
>> ... as usual, lots of high-quality info. Can't disagree with any of it.
>
>
> thanks. many errors, due to inadequately refreshed dynamic wet-ware RAM
> Chuck will probably notice most of th
On 27 September 2017 at 18:29, allison via cctalk wrote:
>>
> Everyone forgets Norton Utilities...
Well, no!
Still use it, in fact. I have a copy of the last DOS version.
A low-priority project of mine is that I am trying to make a running
VirtualBox VM with PC-DOS 7.1.
Not 7.01, but the ver
- Original Message -
From: "Al Kossow via cctalk"
To:
Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2017 10:34 AM
Subject: Re: formatting MFM drives on a IBM PC
>
>
> On 9/28/17 7:21 AM, Geoffrey Oltmans via cctalk wrote:
>> Were any earlier MFM/RLL voice coil/servo
>&g
On 9/28/17 7:21 AM, Geoffrey Oltmans via cctalk wrote:
> Were any earlier MFM/RLL voice coil/servo
> controlled, or were they all stepper drives?
>
Most drives 40mb and up are closed-loop with dedicated
servo surfaces and many have servos that don't work any more.
Maxtor and Atasi are early ex
On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 11:16 AM, allison via cctalk
wrote:
>
>>
> IDE disks format usually meant high level only. SCSI could be either
> depnding on the specific controller and media.
>
>
Seems like the omission of low level formatting of IDE drives had more to
do with preserving the servo trac
On 9/27/17 10:59 AM, Ethan via cctalk wrote:
IIRC, the first time I had problems with the low level format was
with one
of the early IDE controllers and a 230MB Maxtor. Crapped out the entire
firmware, was never able to get it to admit who it was again. Seemed to
work okay with earlier MFM/RLL
On 9/27/17 12:04 PM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
On 26 September 2017 at 21:33, Phil Blundell via cctalk
wrote:
Low-level formatting (which, at the time, was just called "formatting")
used to be quite a routine operation on ST-506 MFM and RLL hard disks.
They usually came completely blank f
I'm suffering from TL;DR disease this morning, so I didn't have the
inclination to follow all of the links cited in the discussion, so my
apology is presented in advance.
However, there *was* another way to handle large drives in earlier DOS
before 4.0. It was far from satisfactory, because it br
On Wed, 27 Sep 2017, Liam Proven wrote:
... as usual, lots of high-quality info. Can't disagree with any of it.
thanks. many errors, due to inadequately refreshed dynamic wet-ware RAM
Chuck will probably notice most of them.
There were several additional programs, that were sometimes needed,
On 26 September 2017 at 21:33, Phil Blundell via cctalk
wrote:
>
> Low-level formatting (which, at the time, was just called "formatting")
> used to be quite a routine operation on ST-506 MFM and RLL hard disks.
> They usually came completely blank from the factory and you had to
> format them acc
On 26 September 2017 at 20:53, Fred Cisin via cctalk
wrote:
... as usual, lots of high-quality info. Can't disagree with any of it.
> There were several additional programs, that were sometimes needed, such as
> if you wanted to have a partition larger than 32MB on DOS 3.30 or earlier
> (MS-DOS
> On Sep 26, 2017, at 10:20 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk
> wrote:
>
> On 09/26/2017 09:53 PM, Mike Stein via cctalk wrote:
>
>> Ah yes, the interesting 11MB IMI 7710. Cromemco also used them in their
>> Z-2H; I still have one somewhere, not a bad drive when it worked ;-)
>
> The really crazy
IIRC, the first time I had problems with the low level format was with one
of the early IDE controllers and a 230MB Maxtor. Crapped out the entire
firmware, was never able to get it to admit who it was again. Seemed to
work okay with earlier MFM/RLL 40 MB and 80 MB Conner drives (I think, it's
bee
> On Sep 27, 2017, at 7:55 AM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk
> wrote:
>
> ...
> I have never had to do that. The only boxes I ever LLF disks for
> were PDP-11's and VAX. And then, only once, on initial install.
DEC was all over the map as far as disk formatting goes. Some packs were
delivered
From: cctalk [cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] on behalf of Fred Cisin via cctalk
[cctalk@classiccmp.org]
Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2017 7:53 PM
To: Ali; General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: formatting MFM drives on a IBM PC
On Tue, 26 Sep 2017, emanuel stiebler wrote:
So, what is the best(?) or easiest piece of software,
to format the drives, check for bad blocks, etc.?
I like the "CMS Fixed Disk Diagnostics" very much, the file is FDIAG.COM
It can be found here:
ftp://computermuseum.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/ut
On 09/26/2017 09:53 PM, Mike Stein via cctalk wrote:
> Ah yes, the interesting 11MB IMI 7710. Cromemco also used them in their Z-2H;
> I still have one somewhere, not a bad drive when it worked ;-)
The really crazy thing is that we were taking our hardware over to
Viking Labs to do temperature
- Original Message -
From: "Chuck Guzis via cctalk"
To: "Jules Richardson via cctalk"
Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2017 8:38 PM
Subject: Re: formatting MFM drives on a IBM PC
> On 09/26/2017 03:53 PM, Jules Richardson via cctalk wrote:
>> On 09/26/20
On Tue, 26 Sep 2017, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
I remember quite vividly evaluating the then-new IMI hard drive--the
thing with a smoke-black plexiglas top and about the size of a shoebox.
I think Corvus sold them as Apple II addons.
It used a voice-coil positioner. If you lifted the front of
On 09/26/2017 03:53 PM, Jules Richardson via cctalk wrote:
> On 09/26/2017 01:19 PM, Ethan via cctalk wrote:
>> I don't know if it's a good idea to low level format a drive or not.
>
> I remember at least one manufacturer recommending it for their drive(s)
> if they were ever tilted through 90 deg
IIRC, the first time I had problems with the low level format was with one
of the early IDE controllers and a 230MB Maxtor. Crapped out the entire
firmware, was never able to get it to admit who it was again. Seemed to
work okay with earlier MFM/RLL 40 MB and 80 MB Conner drives (I think, it's
been
On Tue, Sep 26, 2017 at 5:53 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
> > I remember at least one manufacturer >recommending it for their >
>> drive(s) if they were ever tilted through 90 degrees - >presumably > there
>> were tiny effects on the head positioning and so not >doing
> I remember at least one manufacturer >recommending it for their
> drive(s) if they were ever tilted through 90 degrees - >presumably
> there were tiny effects on the head positioning and so not >doing a
> LLF would result in problems.
On Tue, 26 Sep 2017, Ali via cctalk wrote:
This was prett
>I remember at least one manufacturer >recommending it for their drive(s) if
>they were ever tilted through 90 degrees - >presumably there were tiny
>effects on the head positioning and so not >doing a LLF would result in
>problems.
This was pretty common wisdom back in the day. Not qu
On 09/26/2017 01:19 PM, Ethan via cctalk wrote:
I don't know if it's a good idea to low level format a drive or not.
I remember at least one manufacturer recommending it for their drive(s) if
they were ever tilted through 90 degrees - presumably there were tiny
effects on the head positioning
On 09/26/2017 12:52 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
> Get SpeedStor (SSTOR.EXE) and use it.
> Once you do, you will never want to go back to the "Advanced
> Diagnostics" nor the BIOS routine.
That'll work. You can also scribble up your own formatter using the
BIOS calls--or check the SIMTEL20
g=c800:5
On Tue, 26 Sep 2017, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
Unfortunately, I agree with Fred. The stock IBM WD1003 controller ROM
did not have a format routine. Other models of the WD1003 did,
however--you'll see that the controller is a WD1003-something and that
may shed some light on its c
One other trivial thought, . . .
A FAST AT could handle 1:1 interleave.
On many slower ones, an interleave could give dramatic improvement in
throughput.
Not having the optimum interleave will not interfere with usage, it is
entirely a performance optimization.
There were even programs that
On Tue, 2017-09-26 at 14:19 -0400, Ethan via cctalk wrote:
> I don't know if it's a good idea to low level format a drive or not.
Low-level formatting (which, at the time, was just called "formatting")
used to be quite a routine operation on ST-506 MFM and RLL hard disks.
They usually came comple
On 09/26/2017 11:57 AM, geneb via cctalk wrote:
> g=c800:5
Unfortunately, I agree with Fred. The stock IBM WD1003 controller ROM
did not have a format routine. Other models of the WD1003 did,
however--you'll see that the controller is a WD1003-something and that
may shed some light on its capa
Many hard drive controllers had a crude low level format program in their
ROMs. With DEBUG, you could JMP to it, typically
G=C800:5 although some were C800:0 or other offsets. U C800:0 to look at
the code and find it.
G=C800:5 or G_c800:800 for Western Digital controllers
G=C800:CCC
On Tue, 26 Sep 2017, Ethan via cctalk wrote:
Hi,
trying to check some MFM drives I have on my shelf.
Have an IBM PC AT, with an WD1003 controller in it.
So, what is the best(?) or easiest piece of software,
to format the drives, check for bad blocks, etc.?
I think I remember something like "ontr
On Tue, 26 Sep 2017, emanuel stiebler via cctalk wrote:
trying to check some MFM drives I have on my shelf.
Have an IBM PC AT, with an WD1003 controller in it.
So, what is the best(?) or easiest piece of software,
to format the drives, check for bad blocks, etc.?
I think I remember something like
Maybe simply run the debug utility supplied with DOS and at the prompt
enter this:
G=C800:5
Normally, all the necessary tools to check and mark bad blocks are
accessible by this way. However, you will have to encode manually the
HDD specifications (heads, sectors, etc.)
On 26/09/2017 20:08,
On Tue, Sep 26, 2017 at 2:08 PM, emanuel stiebler via cctalk
wrote:
> Hi,
>
> trying to check some MFM drives I have on my shelf.
> Have an IBM PC AT, with an WD1003 controller in it.
>
> So, what is the best(?) or easiest piece of software,
> to format the drives, check for bad blocks, etc.?
>
>
Hi,
trying to check some MFM drives I have on my shelf.
Have an IBM PC AT, with an WD1003 controller in it.
So, what is the best(?) or easiest piece of software,
to format the drives, check for bad blocks, etc.?
I think I remember something like "ontrack" for doing it,
but didn't touch PCs for a w
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