potter@bensun.cs.umd.edu (Richard Potter) (01/06/89)
I moved a 30M hard disk from on IBM-AT to another IBM-AT. The setup on the original AT showed the hard disk to be type 20. The problem is that the setup on the receiving AT only allows setups 1-15. It will not accept 20. What exactly do these types refer to? Why would one AT allow more types than the other? Is there anyway around this problem? thanks in advance, Richard Potter potter@tove.umd.edu
woan@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Ronald S. Woan) (01/06/89)
In article <15289@mimsy.UUCP> potter@bensun.cs.umd.edu (Richard Potter) writes: >I moved a 30M hard disk from on IBM-AT to another IBM-AT. >The setup on the original AT showed the hard disk to be type >20. The problem is that the setup on the receiving AT only >allows setups 1-15. It will not accept 20. These types refer to drive parameters (to be specific: cylinders, heads, reduced write compensation, precompensation, ecc max burst length, control byte, std timeout, fmt drive timeout, check drive timeout, landing zone, and sectors/track) that can be found in the drive tables present in ROM BIOS. Older IBM-AT BIOS's are limited in that they have only types 1-15 in their ROM. Fortunately, this does not mean that you have to replace your BIOS; IBM wisely made one of these types (15 I believe) defined in the battery backed CMOS RAM that holds general system setup, allowing for a user defined drive type. Many programs, namely Disk Manager (from Ontrack Computer Systems) and Speedstor use this feature to implement their own hard disk device drivers to allow those of us with older ATs to use the extended drive types... There's probably some public domain program out there that handles this problem as well but I haven't seen it. | "This whole right brain, left brain thing is just a plot on the part | | of the humanities depart. to excuse their never having learned any science"| | Roger Dell, Prof. of Mathematics | | Ronald Woan, woan@cory.berkeley.edu |