[sci.electronics] More ST-506 drive woes...

cgordon@vpnet.chi.il.us (Gordon Hlavenka) (06/28/90)

>There's no way to start a low-level format!  Does anyone have, or know
>where to get, a formatter for these original IBM controllers?

I have an old 10-meg Miniscribe from a Corona PC.  It uses a dumb (no ROM)
controller.  With it there is a disk containing format utilities and the
*.sys driver to make the drive accessible to DOS 1.x.

I can send you this stuff if you want it...

----------------------------------------------------------
Gordon S. Hlavenka                 cgordon@vpnet.chi.il.us
Disclaimer: He's lying

grege@gold.GVG.TEK.COM (Greg Ebert) (07/03/90)

>
>>There's no way to start a low-level format!  Does anyone have, or know
>>where to get, a formatter for these original IBM controllers?
>

This came up in comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware. Being a hacker, I would read the
data sheet for the WD1010 (or WD2010) hard disk controller chip. On the
PC-AT (and probably the PC & PC-XT), the controller is strictly I/O mapped,
and lives at 1F0h-1F7h. There's also registers at 3F6 and 3F7, but I think
you can get by without them. Happy hacking.