HK 386 clone

clewis@eci386.uucp (Chris Lewis) (05/31/90)

Sorry for the crosspost, (I mean, after all perhaps this should go
in a PC group), but the UNIX/XENIXer's are more likely to know the
answer.  (Especially since the end result is eventually UNIX)

One of my colleagues has a generic Hong Kong 386 motherboard with an
AMI BIOS (dated 1989).  He had a WD1007WAH kicking around, so he
installed it with a 180Mb ESDI drive and a generic floppy-only
controller for floppies.  The disk has 1200 some-odd cylinders.

Setting the WD1007WAH to the 63 sector translation (because the
drive is > 1024 cylinders), and drive type 1, the WD1007WAH's
ROM low-level formatter seemed to format the drive perfectly.
Light flicker on drive and all.  But attempting to use FDISK returns
"seek error - can't access C: drive" or hangs the system.

With a borrowed DTC5180 (I think that's the right number), he
gets the same result.

With a different version of the same manufacturer's motherboard
(also AMI BIOS), he gets the same result with the WD1007WAH
Using the DT5180, only drive C is accessible via FDISK.

It (the WD1007WAH, and disk drive) works perfectly on SCI 286 and
386 motherboards (Phoenix BIOS).  (SCI motherboards usually have
built-in floppy and hard disk controllers - the hard disk controller
was disabled).

The vendor made a claim about EGA clashes with the WD1007WAH, but
a monochrome adapter made no difference.  All of the vendor's
motherboards appear to have AMI BIOS.  This is a personal system,
so my colleague is trying to stick with this vendor because they're
the cheapest around (or rather, he's already paid for it :-().

Does anyone know of any problems/solutions with AMI BIOS and WD1007WAH?
(or WD1007* generically)

Any other suggestions?

Thanks
-- 
Chris Lewis, Elegant Communications Inc, {uunet!attcan,utzoo}!lsuc!eci386!clewis
Ferret mailing list: eci386!ferret-list, psroff mailing list: eci386!psroff-list

tim@timstn.UUCP (Tim Sailer) (06/07/90)

clewis@eci386.uucp (Chris Lewis) writes:

[stuff deleted]

>ROM low-level formatter seemed to format the drive perfectly.
>Light flicker on drive and all.  But attempting to use FDISK returns
>"seek error - can't access C: drive" or hangs the system.
[stuff deleted]

I've found that you have to set the bios for drive type 1, or pick the
built in drive type that matched exactly the heads, and the closest
on the cylinders, ignoring the sector setting. Then low-level and fdisk.