caprio@ttidcb.UUCP (Don Caprio) (06/27/85)
In a recent article I posted to the net I was seeking help on bringing
up my Shugart SA604 6.7 meg hard disk on the IBM PC. I did not get much
help although there was alot of interest in the $99.00 dollar drive.
I have brought the drive on line and everything is working just fine.
I've tested the drive running PC DOS versions 2.0, 2.1 and 3.0 and
did not encounter any problems with any of the O/S's.
My main concern was getting software to format the drive. This
was easly solved when I found out that the ADAPTEC hard disk
controller card contains a generic format utility in the BIOS.
The format utility run using DEBUG and starting executoion
at a specified location in the BIOS PROM. The Format utility prompts
the user for several of the hard disk parameters i.e. interleave,
drive id, step pulse rate, landing zone, ECC correction,
write pre-comp, reduce write current cylinder, head count and the
cylinder count. The following script was used with the ADAPTEC controller
to format the Shugart SA604 hard disk:
A>DEBUG
-g=C800:CCC
*** ADAPTEC ACB2000 Format Program ***
*** enter interleave (1:9) = 2
*** enter drive id (0/1) = 0
*** should we use default parameters (Y/N) n
*** reply to the following questions in hex only
*** step pulse rate (0-7) = 3 <CR>
*** landing zone = B6 <CR>
*** ECC correction span = 8 <CR>
*** Write pre-comp cylinder = <CR>
*** reduce write current cylinder = <CR>
*** head count = 4 <CR>
*** cylinder count = A0 <CR>
*** sending mode select - 15 ***
*** sending write buffer - 0F ***
*** format in progress... 04 ***
Press control-break to quit
-q
A>FDISK
...
A>FORMAT C:/S/V
Overall the installation and formatting process were very easy. Everthing
went smooth. Anyone wanting to upgrade to a hasd disk and cant afford the
price of the 10 meg this is a great alternitive for only $300.00 bucks.
I bought my ADAPTEC controller from PC Limited out of Texas. The controller
arrived in less than a week, no tax and the shipping was free. The controller
was $195.00 (including the cables) best price around. Their customer service
is good and they are willing to help with any problems. I picked up the
Shugart SA604 from California Digital for $99.00.
California Digital PC's Limited
17700 Figueroa Street 7801 N. Lamar #E-200
Carson, Calif. 90248 Austin, Texas 78752
(800) 421-5041 order line (800) IBM-5150 order line
(213) 217-0500 Technical (512) 452-0323 Technicaljb@terak.UUCP (John Blalock) (06/30/85)
> In a recent article I posted to the net I was seeking help on bringing > up my Shugart SA604 6.7 meg hard disk on the IBM PC. I did not get much > help although there was alot of interest in the $99.00 dollar drive. > I recently purchased two SA606 drives for $150 each and a Xebec S1410 SCSI controller for $125 from Paramount Electronics. The SA606 is the same as the SA604 except it has 3 platters and 6 heads for a capacity of 10 megabytes, unformatted. They formatted to 8.16 MB each using 512 byte sectors with the S1410 and are running on my S-100 CP/M system... Paramount Electronics 649 E. Arques Ave. Sunnyvale, CA 94086 (408) 773-9595 ----------- John Blalock, W7AAY uucp: ...{amd,decvax,hao,ihnp4,seismo}!noao!terak!jb phone: (602) 998-4800 us mail: Terak Corp., 14151 N. 76th St., Scottsdale, AZ 85260 \\\\\ -----> Soon to be part of CalComp, A Sanders Company
RAK@psuvm.BITNET (07/01/85)
But can you boot from your hard disk?
-- Rex Knepp
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