thw9759@ultb.UUCP (T.H. White) (03/25/89)
I am trying to get a 70 megabyte ESDI hard drive to work with an IBM AT clone (Reliant 286 system to be exact). It has Phoenix Bios 3.10 installed in it. From what little I found out about the hard drive, it seems to be a drive of type: 67. The ROM BIOS SETUP goes to type 47. Is there a way around it? I want to put XENIX on it which doesn't use the bios anyway. If I just had a way of knowing where the registers are and how many cylinders, sectors per track, landing zone, Ecc, write precomp, and a couple of other parameters and I think Xenix wouldtake off and do its thing but I don't know what the parameters are and no one seems to know. Of course IBM is of no help as usual and the Santa Cruz Operation won't help either. I have a Western Digital ESDI controller which operates the 1.2meg floppy just fine... Any help would be most appreciated.. Thank you.
samc@hpccc.HP.COM (Samuel Chau) (03/29/89)
> I am trying to get a 70 megabyte ESDI hard drive to work with an IBM AT > clone (Reliant 286 system to be exact). It has Phoenix Bios 3.10 installed > in it. From what little I found out about the hard drive, it seems to be a > drive of type: 67. The ROM BIOS SETUP goes to type 47. Is there a way around > it? If you can look at the drive and tell me the name of the manufacturer I may be able to help. I have just downloaded a master drive list from Western Digital's support BBS that lists many ESDI drives from various manufacturers. And, like you said, most BIOS ROM hard drive tables stop at type 47, so type 67 doesn't sound right. > I want to put XENIX on it which doesn't use the bios anyway. If I just had > a way of knowing where the registers are and how many cylinders, sectors > per track, landing zone, Ecc, write precomp, and a couple of other > parameters and I think Xenix wouldtake off and do its thing but I don't > know what the parameters are and no one seems to know. Of course IBM > is of no help as usual and the Santa Cruz Operation won't help either. > I have a Western Digital ESDI controller which operates the 1.2meg > floppy just fine... It is possible for an ESDI controller to query the drive for its physical parameters. Of course, it will take some clever programming (probably in assembly language) to get it to work. I assume your ESDI controller is a WD-1007A-WA2? If so, then whether you can configure the drive properly hinges on whether there is a BIOS ROM chip on the controller. WD's BIOS includes a drive parameter table covering several "popular" ESDI drives, as well as low-level formatting and defect sparing routines. The standard DEBUG g=c800:5 enters the utility and should start you off. After the low-level format, DOS 3.3 FDISK and FORMAT can be used to create the appropriate partitions. If your ESDI controller has no BIOS ROM, then according to WD documentation, the motherboard BIOS drive table must provide an entry with the EXACT physical parameters of the drive. #cylinders, #heads and #sectors/track (SPT) are the three most important parameters. Unfortunately most BIOS ROMs include only entries conforming to ST-506 MFM drives, namely with 17 SPT. ESDI drives need 34 SPT. Thus, if you have the facilities to alter the BIOS ROM contents, you can hack in a correct entry for your drive, possibly over an existing drive type that you'll never use. This is exactly what I did for my 386 system to get my new ESDI drive to work just a few weeks ago. Of course, ROM hacking can be very messy, but short of that, you will have to order the WD-1007-WA2 BIOS chip from WD, or hope that the next revision of your motherboard BIOS will provide ESDI drive support! Western Digital's support BBS number is: (714) 756-8176 1200/2400 baud N81 Send me e-mail if you want more information regarding BIOS alterations. Sam Chau HP Cupertino samc@hpda (408) 447-0238 Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are not those of Hewlett Packard, but only from my humble self.
thw9759@ultb.UUCP (T.H. White) (03/31/89)
Thanks for the help. Still really haven't gotten anywhere yet though. It seems that the controller that I have is a Western Digital controller with the following label on the top: ESDI ADAPTER 61-000151 WD1005A-ARM The 70meg drive has on the metal end of it a sticker that has the following: P/N 90X8528 70MB ESDI On the side sticker it has the following: Manufactured by IBM Corp. Rochester, NM USA Type: 0667 (so far there are no typo errors in the data above) The machine that I have been trying to run it in is a Reliant Clone 286 AT. Pictured in this months (April) Computer Shopper on page (107). It has a Phoneix 3.10 Bios chip in it with 1meg of memory at 1 wait state. It came with an RLL controller and a 65meg hard drive. I removed that controller and plugged mine in and plugged it to the 1.2 floppy and the esdi drive. It runs the floppy ok and the heads drop on the hard drive but when I run Disk Manager it gives initialization errors. If anyone has an IBM ESDI 70 MEG HARD DRIVE, please write mail stating some of the specs so that maybe I could get XENIX to run on it. I'm in no position to make ROM chips or spend lots of money on anything. I'm poor like everyone else, except worse. If I can't get it to work, I will give up and sell it probably (if I can) otherwise use as a paper weight. Thank you for any help. CRASH