alex@.UUCP (Alex Laney) (12/23/87)
Need some help from CATS here .. This is only of interest to those interested in attaching disks not on the Commodore "short list" of supported drives. I have a 40MB 5-1/4" ST-506 MiniScribe (don't have the Model No handy). It has 809 cylinders, 6 heads. It's not one of the listed disks when running Prep. The sheet that came with the drive lists cylinder 852 as the parking cylinder. I'm using the A2090. I ran prep, set number of cylinders to 853 (can't park unless this is set like this). The pre-comp cylinder I set to 853 as well. (Is this my problem?) Then I set my highest cylinder in 1st partiion to 809, which seems to be correct. [I say that because Prep seems to start from 1, not 0] It finished prep with no problems. It then formatted ok. BUT, when booting, I get a 10-15 second buzz from the disk! This is from the BindDrivers in my startup-sequence. It's like it is stepping across every cylinder, but the intensity of it seems out of the ordinary! It runs fine, but I wonder if this is stressing the motor too much. I won't retry the prep for a couple of weeks (Xmas/NewYear, etc), but should my "pre-comp" cylinder be 809? Of non-technical interest: There is two sets of documentation to do my Disk prepping, but nowhere does the pre-comp cylinder get defined. What exactly happens during my BindDriver? Also, I don't think people at dealers will be able to configure all disks based on this. Only the most qualified, will. There is no section describing how to configure non-listed drives. And it seems to be incorrect to force the parking cylinder to be the last cylinder of the first partition, when drives have parking cylinders. I have configured and formatted lots of drives on other machines, so I feel that I shouldn't have had problems. I think the documentation needs an upgrade in this area. Also, it seems confusing, the way dh0: and res0: are documented. The process seems to be nicely simple, using install on the A2090 floppy, but definitely some rough edges ... -- Alex Laney alex@xicom.UUCP ...utzoo!dciem!nrcaer!xios!xicom!alex Xicom Technologies, 205-1545 Carling Av., Ottawa, Ontario, Canada We may have written the SNA software you use. The opinions are my own.
spencer@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Randy Spencer) (12/28/87)
In article <490@.UUCP> alex@.UUCP (Alex Laney) writes: > >I have a 40MB 5-1/4" ST-506 MiniScribe. I'm using the A2090. > >...It then formatted ok. BUT, when booting, I get a 10-15 >second buzz from the disk! This is from the BindDrivers in my startup-sequence. >It's like it is stepping across every cylinder, but the intensity of it seems >out of the ordinary! It runs fine... I don't think that this is a problem. My ST506 drive does the same thing, My first SCSI drive which is also recognized never does that. When I get a second ST506 (isn't it amazing that ALL these drives are recognized on boot up!) I will let you know if that also scans the disk. >it seems confusing, the way dh0: and res0: are documented. The process seems >to be nicely simple, using install on the A2090 floppy, but definitely some >rough edges ... Yes the documentation is the worst that I have ever seen from Commodore (and that's saying something!) Not that it is wrong or anything, but I understand hard drives rather well, and I took forever figuring out the documentation. Darn good thing that it is so easy to format any of the drives that they consider standard. When I went to install a second ST506 or my SCSI drive, it was not easy, and the documentation is really lacking in the 'theroy' area. If you follow it step by step, minding every word that you read, it will get you through however. > >Alex Laney alex@xicom.UUCP ...utzoo!dciem!nrcaer!xios!xicom!alex -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Randy Spencer P.O. Box 4542 Berkeley CA 94704 (415)222-7595 spencer@mica.berkeley.edu I N F I N I T Y BBS: (415)222-9416 ..ucbvax!mica!spencer s o f t w a r e AAA-WH1M -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-