erd@giza.cis.ohio-state.edu (Ethan R Dicks) (06/08/90)
First, I would like to thank everyone who provided me with spare parts, working units, non-working units and so on. Second, I have discovered that the D9060 and D9090 units are self-formatting presuming that you have working hardware. The HEADER command (or sending the N0:disk name,id command over the command channel) does correctly low-level format the HDA, but it takes over an hour. Once I aquired a stock of spare parts, I discovered that at least one of my boards was bad, which prevented the format from taking. When the drive light blinks multiple times, indicating a formatting error, the SASI<->ST506 controller board is usually the culprit. Third, it *really* helps to have the D9060/D9090 jumper set correctly. The jumper is (I believe) J14, located at B2 on the DOS board, near the LED connector. It should be installed for a D9090 and removed for a D9060. Several of the DOS boards I had were strapped for D9090 use, but I had a D9060 HDA. The drive attempts to format the disk, but it craps out with an error, after many minutes of trying (over 1 hour). This one had me going for weeks. I was casually reading the replacement procedure for the DOS board and saw the sentence about the jumper. One jumper cut and an hour later, I had a working D9060 drive. These drives are truely remarkable, and except for the fragile nature of 10 year old HDAs, very sturdy. I have heard that there is a book in the works about the D9060 internals; armed with that, there is no reason why the D9060 chassis could not be equipped with a modern drive, such as the ST225. The DOS board contains a table describing the drive geometry, which it passes to the controller board. Change the drive and change the ROMs and reformat and go! Thanks again to all who supplied help, especially Dave Haynie. -ethan -- Ethan R. Dicks | ###### This signifies that the poster is a member in Software Results Corp| ## good sitting of Inertia House: Bodies at rest. 940 Freeway Drive N. | ## Columbus OH 43229 | ###### "You get it, you're closer."