Reply 1 of 3, by Jo22
- Rank
- l33t++
Hi, I've found some information on your fixed disk. 😀
It seems to be a WD93038 series drive with XT-IDE interface.
An XT-Bus hard disk, so to say (since IDE drives were originally called AT-Bus HDDs).
According to one of the links, there used to be an "IDE SUPERBIOS program for low-level formatting".
"Use the IDE SUPERBIOS program to perform a low-level format of your
drive. The WDXT140R or WDXT150R adapter card contains the IDE SUPER-
BIOS program. If you have an XT compatible with a drive interface
connector on the motherboard, it must provide a SUPERBIOS program. Do
no use the IBM Advanced Diagnostic Format Option.
The low-level format is performed just once for each physical drive.
When you dynamically configure a drive as two virtual drives
(partions), perform the low-level format only on drive C and the run
the DOS FDISK and FORMAT utilities on both logical drives (C and D)."
Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Xe9_lZPMnQ
https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/hard-drives-hdd/ … -HH-IDE-XT.html
https://computerpreservation.ecrater.com/p/23 … tal-30mb-xt-ide
Edit: Just remember something. Compact Flash cards support 8-Bit transfer modes, too.
If I remember correctly (better check), they were said to be XT-IDE compatible.
Not that I encourage you to not continue to use your old disk. I just thought knowing this might useful for testing.
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In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
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Reply 2 of 3, by Ymsi
I think it will not work with CF card. (Controller says Drive error/drive not ready or something like that on POST)
And how to run IDE SUPERBIOS program? From debug?
Reply 3 of 3, by Ymsi
And answer is YES.
The formatter sits in c800: 5 is most like the MFM controllers.
Seek error is totally vanished.
But there is one problem, when I dynamically configured the hard disk, it did not boot from it.
If this is not done, the controller itself configures the disk by default.