Old Hard Drive and so am I

[ZOBEX]

OK so I am getting old and don't remember things off the top of my head nor where I put them.

I fixed a ST-251 for someone, it ran fine. He tries to run and set it up on a Seagate RLL card and scrambled the drive. So now I have to erase the zero track because it no longer recognizes it self. I don't remember the debug call to erase the identity track and I don't want to dig through a lot of boxes of storage to find my old notes.

Anyone off hand remember what the debug call is ???

Tnks

 

[modem7]

Often when moving these old MFM/RLL drives between controllers requires that the drive be low-level formatted on the new controller. It's not just cylinder 0 that needs to be done, but all cylinders.

For controllers that contain their own low-level format code, the code is normally at address C800:5 (but can vary from that). And so assuming that the Seagate RLL card has it's own low-level format code, and that the code starts at C800:5, the DEBUG command is:

G=C800:5

 

[ZOBEX]

Often when moving these old MFM/RLL drives between controllers requires that the drive be low-level formatted on the new controller. It's not just cylinder 0 that needs to be done, but all cylinders.

For controllers that contain their own low-level format code, the code is normally at address C800:5 (but can vary from that). And so assuming that the Seagate RLL card has it's own low-level format code, and that the code starts at C800:5, the DEBUG command is:

G=C800:5

Actually it's not just calling the bios , the G=C800:5 or such. There is a debug routine for erasing the drive identity on the 0 cylinder. I first time I saw that call was written in a copy of Computer Shopper back I THINK about 1991. Remember CS the huge phone book of adds and special articles?? The problem is the drive now thinks it is a ST-225R and the controller card keeps identifying it as such and now I can't get control of a format or HD wipe let alone a low level format. Keeps trying to format it as a ST-225R. I have tried 1 WD and ST controller cards with and without bios and it won't budge. Keeps thinking it is a ST-225R which is a 20MB RLL drive. When I certified this drive about 2 weeks ago I used the same controller cards which I have owned and used for almost 20 years now.

 

[modem7]

If a controller records the drive model (or drive geometry) to somewhere on a MFM/RLL drive, that's a proprietary thing. So the two controllers must be using the same mechanism (a Seagate mechanism).

So a generic low-level formatter should overwrite track 0. You could try the 'initialize' functionality within SpeedStor (at http://members.dodo.com.au/~slappanel555/software.htm) to do that.