plim@hpsgpa.HP.COM (Peter Lim) (12/14/89)
Okay everybody,
A while back I posted regarding a problem I was having with getting
my AMI BIOS machine to work with my ESDI hard disk. I finally found and
solved most of the problems (I say most because a couple of new ones
came out as a result :-)) read on ......
The culprit turned out to be a combination of my specific variant
of WD-1007A card and the AMI BIOS. The bottom line is that the BIOS know
nuts about ESDI hard disk. All the hard disk table entries in the AMI BIOS
are 17 sectors/track. And aparently the BIOS doesn't handle the user
defined type 47 very well. In fact, with type 47, when I boot the machine,
the drive table entry is all zeros !
My variant of the WD-1007A doesn't have a BIOS ! So, I can't do a
DEBUG session to format the thing ! And since there's no BIOS and the
AMI BIOS know nuts about ESDI, you simply can't boot ! The info just
isn't there.
After two long nights and 1001 ways of formatting the thing, we gave
up and I bought myself a DTC-6280 ESDI controller. Just plugged the
card in, do a DEBUG session, and in half-an-hour the system is running
smoothly. And I get raw transfer rate of 975KB/s compared to about
500KB/s I got from using the WD-1007A controller (in a machine which
BIOS supports the drive).
What I haven't try is to patch the AMI BIOS to give it a standard
entry with 35 sectors/track. May be someone in similar situation
would like to try this .............
However, it is not totally trouble free ! Right after getting everything
up, I find that I can't boot off 360K floppy and I can't do low-density
disk format (360K/720K) ! It will read/write both high/low-density disks
with no problem, just can't format them.
But then, I heard that DTC controller tends to need some burn in (I
think I actually believe this to be true). On the second day (which is
yesterday), I found that I can boot from 360K floppy, but I still can't
format low-density disks. Any suggestions or do I wait for the burn-in
process to take effect ? For your information, my brother's AT can't
access his 360K drive B: after he installed a DTC RLL controller for
about a month. After that, everything works fine :-).
Thanks for the many suggestions I've collected (and appended below).
Seems like the moral is: "Don't get any hard disk controller which doesn't
have an on board BIOS" !
Regards,
Peter Lim.
HP Singapore IC Design Center.
E-mail address: plim@hpsgwg.HP.COM
Snail Mail address: Peter Lim
Hewlett Packard Singapore,
(ICDS, ICS)
1150, Depot Road,
Singapore 0410.
Telephone: (065)-279-2289
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From hp-pcd!hplabs!ames!apple.com!claris!zok!root Fri Dec 8 16:10 SGP 1989
Subject: Your ESDI disk
Peter,
>My Micropolis 1355 ESDI drive just arrived and I am having hell
>of a problem installing the thing. May be you know how to fix this,
>I've posted the following message to comp.sys.ibm.pc. Any idea ?
>Otherwise, I'll have to be living without a usable hard disk for
>a while.
Read through your entire article with interest.
If you don't get a reply that tells you *exactly* what you need
to do for your configuration, IMHO, may I suggest that you go out and
spend about $100 (US) dollars and get the latest version of DOS 4.xx.
DOS 4.xx allows you to have disks up to 512MB in size. Even
though DOS 4.0 was buggy -- which is what I have (actually had) --
I've had no problem formatting and using a partition of up to 100MB.
Good luck.
-- Mark
Mark W. Snitily Consulting Services:
894 Brookgrove Lane Graphics, Operating Systems, Compilers
Cupertino, CA 95014 (408) 252-0456
mark@zok.uucp
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From plim Fri Dec 8 16:22 SGP 1989
Subject: Re: ESDI hard disk problem
I don't know. Doesn't sound to me like DOS 4.0 will be able to
fix the problem. Seems more like trying to get the BIOS to
recognise that the drive is running at 35 sectors/track. Once
that's done, the system will know where to put and find the
boot sector and everything will be solved. We'll see........
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From hpsgpa!hpsgwg!hp-pcd!hplabs!ucbvax!cygnus.berkeley.edu!chen Sat Dec 9 04:54 SGP 1989
Subject: Re: AMI BIOS vs. ESDI problem
I have the same dated AMI bios and am using an ESDI (~150 formatted,
DTC controller though). I used type 1 in the CMOS. I've tried to
use 47 and typed in the hard disk parameters, but had problems running
UNIX.
Hope this experience may help.
Chien
PS: According to my computer manufacture, the ESDI controllers would
translate the bios calls; therefore, type 1 is alright.
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From hpsgpa!hpsgwg!hp-pcd!hplabs!ucbvax!schizo.samsung.com!sharkey!cfctech!rphroy!thpsgwg Sun Dec 10 04:51 SGP 1989
Subject: Re: AMI BIOS vs. ESDI problem
Peter,
We were wondering about a similar problem using RLL (ST4144R) drives. Seems that
AMI's BIOS does not update the CMOS RAM correctly. When you shut the computer
down, the setup goes away. AMI said that this would be fixed in a new BIOS
release, but I haven't heard whether or not is was released. To solve the
problem, use the BIOS on your controller card. I've used WD1007's with the
AMI boards for over a year now with no problems.
--rick
--
_____________________________________________________________________________
| Rick Lotoczky | #include <std.disclaimer> |
| Structured Electronic Sys. Inc. | If you want to be noticed, stand up. |
| 650 Red Oak Lane | If you want to be heard, speak up. |
| Rochester, MI 48063 | If you want to be liked,shut up & sit down|
|_________________________________|___________________________________________|
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From jsims@wpi.wpi.edu Mon Dec 11 23:29 SGP 1989
Subject: ESDI Drive
I have the identical setup in my machine. Page 25 of my manual is:
1. Run the SETUP program for your system and define the ESDI drive(s) as
type 1.
2. Boot on your DOS diskette and run DEBUG.
3. At the DEBUG prompt ( - ), enter:
G=C800:5
4. Select the default configuration as defined by the Controller across
the top of the screen. These values may not match the drive's physical
parameters.
5. Select Option 2 - low level format. The controller will always use
1:1 interleave automatically.
6. After the format has finished, select Option 5 - enter defects from the
printed copy of the defect map (or use the defect map printed on the top of
the drive.)
Media defects are identified by Surface (or head), Cylinder (or track),
and the number of bytes from Index (BFIND). Disregard the CRC information
printed across the bottom of the defect map.
7. The initialization process is now complete. There are several other
options, such as Verify Drive or Perform Surface Analysis, that you may
run if desired.
8. Select Option 6 to exit and reboot. Note that all changes made while
in the BIOS will only be finalized after a proper exit through function 6.
9. Use the partitioning software or your operating system to
finish installing the drive. *DO NOT* perform an additional initialization
or low level format with any software.
Personal notes:
My drive is partitioned (Using ordinary FDISK) into 32, 32, 32, 20, 20 Mb
sections. The parameters *did not* match the physical drive. This machine
has received very heavy usage over the past 3 months, and has had no
problems. I entered the bad sections into the BIOS formatting routine.
However, mapping software turns up no bad sectors anywhere on the disk. I
assume that the controller simply remaps these sections, and you really lose
the space off of the end. Each logical drive has been totally filled at one time,
so the bad sectors aren't there.
Good luck, and let me know how it turns out.
Rob
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From hpsgpa!hpfcla!att!clyde!feg Tue Dec 12 00:50 SGP 1989
Subject: Re: AMI BIOS vs. ESDI problem
Hi Peter,
I can't help you with the mixup you describe that happens
with your new ESDI disk. (I sure will be interested in
your solution when you find it, though).
HOwever, you should find the PARTITION sector of the bootable
partition at sector 1 of track 0 and head 0. Use INT 13
for this, referring to the disk drive (if it is C:) as
80. If you need more information about the use of INT 13
I can send you a file with more explanation of its use.
Unless the bootable partition is properly listed in the
partition sector (with the correct information in its
partition record of that sector) you will get nowhere.
BTW when using INT 13 there is no such thing as a
sector 0; the first sector in any track (sometimes
referred to as cylinder) is always 1.
Forrest Gehrke clyde!feg
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From hpsgpa!hpfcla!hpccc!samc Tue Dec 12 03:16 SGP 1989
Subject: ESDI drive and AMI BIOS
Peter,
I read the basenote you posted on comp.sys.ibm.pc regarding the trouble
you're having with your ESDI drive, WD1007A and AMI BIOS. It turns out I
have a very similar setup in my home system. Earlier this year I
purchased a Mylex 386 motherboard with AMI BIOS, a Maxtor XT-4380E ESDI
drive, and a WD1007A-WA2 drive controller. The first thing I noticed
was that the AMI BIOS did not contain a single entry in its drive table
to accomodate ESDI drives.
Specifically, an ESDI drive type entry in the drive table must have
34 sectors per track (SPT). Physically, however, most ESDI drives are
hard-sectored to 35 SPT. This leaves a single sector available on every
track which can be swapped with a defective sector on the same track,
resulting in a "defect-free" hard disk after the low-level formatting step
is completed. This is exactly what the WD BIOS is capable of doing.
Assuming your WD1007A controller has a BIOS ROM, you can invoke the
low-level formatting/analysis/verifcation utilities by typing G=C800:5
within DEBUG. The same utility is also capable of saving a customized
drive type into CMOS.
The other way to make the ESDI drive work is to "hack" the correct drive entry
into the table. Find an existing entry (within types 1 to 46) that most
closely matches your drive and modify the bytes to custom fit it to your
drive. If you find an entry that already has the correct cylinder and head
counts, then all that needs to be altered is the SPT value. It should be
set to 34. Don't forget to compensate for the altered checksum or the new
ROMs will not allow the system to boot! I usually find an unused area
filled with zero bytes and put the "compensation" bytes there. This is
much easier than trying to find out where in the ROMs the checksum was
actually stored, because for the AMI BIOS, I don't have the foggiest idea.
Another complication I ran into is sector translation. My Maxtor drive
has more than 1024 cylinders and the AMI BIOS has absolutely no support
for that. This prevented the system from accessing the last 200 cylinders
on the drive, resulting in a loss of ~50 Mbytes out of 300. To circumvent
this BIOS limitation, the WD1007A can perform sector translation and
present a totally different set of drive attributes to DOS. The general
form of sector translation specifies 16 heads, 63 SPT, and a correspondingly
scaled-down cylinder count that is less than 1024.
Depending of whether your Micropolis drive has more than 1024 cylinders,
you may or may not need to use sector translation. I also believe for
DOS 3.30 or higher, hard disk utilities such as SpeedStor and Disk Manager
are essentially redundant. These require you to install a device driver,
thus taking up valuable memory. If you want your partitions to be larger
than 32 Mbytes, DOS 4.01 is the better way to go.
To conclude, try using the WD BIOS to low-level format the drive, let it
set the CMOS as well, and then follow up with DOS FDISK and FORMAT for
each partition. If this does not work, then I'm afraid its time to do
some ROM hacking.
Hope this helps. If there's anything else you want to know, please don't
hesitate to ask.
Sam Chau
SPCD Sunnyvale
samc@hpccc
Telnet 720-3711
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Relay-Version: version Notes 2.7.5 (840 Contrib) 87/2/5; site hpsgpa.HP.COM
From: plim@hpsgpa.HP.COM (Peter Lim)
Subject: AMI BIOS vs. ESDI problem
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
I need help with AMI BIOS and ESDI hard disk !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have an 80386 25MHz machine with AMI BIOS (03/03/89, I think
that is the date stamp of the BIOS). Everything has been running
smoothly until my long awaited ESDI drive arrived.
After trying for two long nights, I still can't get the drive
installed properly. My controller card is WD-1007A (can't remember
the rest). Seems to have very strange problems.
I tried SpeedStor as well as the generic DiskManager to do low
level formatting. Seems to go thru' either of them okay. I set
the CMOS RAM drive type to 47 (user defined type), and enter 35 sectors
per track and the rest ... Then, I used FDISK (or the utilities in
DiskManager) to partition the drive into 5 drives (max. 32MB per
partition). Then I did DOS format using either HP's MS-DOS or PC-DOS
version 3.30.
From here on the problem begins. DOS format seems to have put the
system files onto the wrong place ! I used Norton's Untilities to
look at the Boot Sector, FAT etc. It seems like format placed the
system/boot record on sector 18 instead of sector 1 of track 0 !
Seems to me like DOS's confused and treated the disk as 17 sectors
per track instead of 35. I tried many times and had in one occasion
managed to get PC-DOS 3.30 on the system and booted up on the harddisk.
But then, I can't restore files from my backup properly. They came
into the hard disk but not good. Seems to me like file allocation
is up the creek ! Anybody seen anything similar and/or solved it ?
Almost forget to mention, my hard disk is the Micropolis 1355 (171 MB
unformatted).
Thanks in advance for any tips/help/idea/clue/suggestions ......
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Relay-Version: version Notes 2.7.5 (840 Contrib) 87/2/5; site hpsgpa.HP.COM
From: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr)
Subject: Re: AMI BIOS vs. ESDI problem
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
References: <340045@hpsgpa.HP.COM>
Lines: 27
Reply-exos:@crdgw1:To: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.com (bill davidsen)
In article <340045@hpsgpa.HP.COM> plim@hpsgpa.HP.COM (Peter Lim) writes:
| I tried SpeedStor as well as the generic DiskManager to do low
| level formatting. Seems to go thru' either of them okay. I set
| the CMOS RAM drive type to 47 (user defined type), and enter 35 sectors
| per track and the rest ... Then, I used FDISK (or the utilities in
| DiskManager) to partition the drive into 5 drives (max. 32MB per
| partition). Then I did DOS format using either HP's MS-DOS or PC-DOS
| version 3.30.
Have you tried following the instructions which come with the
controller? Mine said to set the drive type to one and gC800:5 (address
from memory, sorry). That and using 34 sectors seemed to work just fine,
although I don't diddle with any of those disk managers, I just use DOS
regular and extended partitions and UNIX partitions.
Since you need special software to use the whole disk you will have
to see how the special stuff works with the disk after using the
controller formatter.
Unless your BIOS type has 35 sectors in its type 47 it frequently
won't work right. This may well be your problem.
--
bill davidsen (davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)
"The world is filled with fools. They blindly follow their so-called
'reason' in the face of the church and common sense. Any fool can see
that the world is flat!" - anon
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Relay-Version: version Notes 2.7.5 (840 Contrib) 87/2/5; site hpsgpa.HP.COM
From: morris@dms.UUCP (Jim Morris)
Subject: Re: AMI BIOS vs. ESDI problem
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
References: <340045@hpsgpa.HP.COM>
Lines: 32
From article <340045@hpsgpa.HP.COM>, by plim@hpsgpa.HP.COM (Peter Lim):
> I need help with AMI BIOS and ESDI hard disk !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
>
> .....
> After trying for two long nights, I still can't get the drive
> installed properly. My controller card is WD-1007A (can't remember
> the rest). Seems to have very strange problems.
> ....
I am having trouble getting a WD1007A-WA2 to format a 1048/4/35 ESDI drive.
I have tried the BIOS (Yes it is g=C800:5 from debug).
It says it formats ok, but when I run scan surface it reports every track as bad!!
This drive works ok with an ADAPTEC 2322.
I suspect that maybe the WD controller only likes drives with 36 sectors, as it works
fine with another drive I have that has that configuration.
Any Opinions will be appreciated.
Also if someone could E-mail me the jumper settings for the WD1007, my vendor didn't
send any docs with the controller, it may help!!
thanks.
--
Jim Morris. {motcsd|weitek}!dms!morris or morris@dms.UUCP
Voice (408) 434-3798
Atari Games Corporation, 675 Sycamore Drive, Milpitas CA 95035 USA
(Arcade Video Game Manufacturer, NOT Atari Corp. ST manufacturer).
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Relay-Version: version Notes 2.7.5 (840 Contrib) 87/2/5; site hpsgpa.HP.COM
From: karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Karl Denninger)
Subject: AMI BIOS vs. ESDI problem
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
References: <340045@hpsgpa.HP.COM>
Lines: 43
>Item 7341 (0 resps) by plim at hpsgpa.HP.COM on Fri 08 Dec 89 13:31
>[Peter Lim] Subject: AMI BIOS vs. ESDI problem
>(46 lines)
>
>I need help with AMI BIOS and ESDI hard disk !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
>
>I have an 80386 25MHz machine with AMI BIOS (03/03/89, I think
>that is the date stamp of the BIOS). Everything has been running
>smoothly until my long awaited ESDI drive arrived.
This should be ok (anything after 1/89 is ok; earlier BIOS versions would
not always boot an ESDI or RLL disk from a cold start)
>After trying for two long nights, I still can't get the drive
>installed properly. My controller card is WD-1007A (can't remember
>the rest). Seems to have very strange problems.
>
>I tried SpeedStor as well as the generic DiskManager to do low
>level formatting. Seems to go thru' either of them okay. I set
>the CMOS RAM drive type to 47 (user defined type), and enter 35 sectors
>per track and the rest ... Then, I used FDISK (or the utilities in
>DiskManager) to partition the drive into 5 drives (max. 32MB per
>partition). Then I did DOS format using either HP's MS-DOS or PC-DOS
>version 3.30.
You didn't read the instructions! You do your format from the CONTROLLER
(low level that is), not some external utility. Go back and re-read the
manual. The entry point should be C800:5 or CC00:5 (depending on how you
have the controller jumpered).
You CANNOT format ESDI disks from an external utility most of the time. The
reasons for this are complex, and include the fact that ESDI includes defect
information ON THE DISK. You've probably destroyed that now, so it is
likely you will need to reenter it -- no big deal (but a pain in the neck).
Jump to the appropriate address from DEBUG and you will find a nice menu.
Follow it. It will low level and sector-spare your disk for you.
Then load DM or whatever and do the partitioning. DO NOT low level format
again -- that is a recipe for disaster.
--
Karl Denninger (karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM, <well-connected>!ddsw1!karl)
Public Access Data Line: [+1 708 566-8911], Voice: [+1 708 566-8910]
Macro Computer Solutions, Inc. "Quality Solutions at a Fair Price"