The drive does no actions, i put my finger very very lightly on the drive head motor underneath and there is no movement, i also hear nothing internally.

You cannot hear the drive spinning ?
Do you have the control cable on J4 ? That is for C: drive. For C/H/S 615/4/17 sounds correct for using it in MFM formatted mode.
If you boot from floppy after your drive was partitioned and formatted can you access C: even if you cannot boot from it ?
I have a note in my WD1006-WAH to use DrivePro to Low Level format and fdisk, maybe you should try DrivePro...
no need in re-doing a low level format if already done.

Can you post a picture of your controller ?
I have a WD1006-WAH plus a few WD1003 types and all have ROM but not all can you use debug to enter the formatter portion.

Horun wrote on 2021-01-27, 02:13:

You cannot hear the drive spinning ? Do you have the control cable on J4 ? That is for C: drive. For C/H/S 615/4/17 sounds corre […]
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The drive does no actions, i put my finger very very lightly on the drive head motor underneath and there is no movement, i also hear nothing internally.

You cannot hear the drive spinning ?
Do you have the control cable on J4 ? That is for C: drive. For C/H/S 615/4/17 sounds correct for using it in MFM formatted mode.
If you boot from floppy after your drive was partitioned and formatted can you access C: even if you cannot boot from it ?
I have a note in my WD1006-WAH to use DrivePro to Low Level format and fdisk, maybe you should try DrivePro...
no need in re-doing a low level format if already done.

Can you post a picture of your controller ?
I have a WD1006-WAH plus a few WD1003 types and all have ROM but not all can you use debug to enter the formatter portion.

The drive spins just fine, Loud and noisy. The motor i mean, by the black box underneath, it does things when it's accessing and i can visually see it moving. I know when it's accessing, or doing anything because of the sound the drive makes, you c an hear it tick/access and all that such. But sat on fdisk it does nothing, just sits there. It's still spun up, but the drives not doing anything. Yes, i have both cables connected, the big one and the smaller one to the drive and the card.

I will try doing the access booting from a floppy. I usually get "operating system not found" and the floppy just drive seeks. I don't know if it is actually partitioning the drive.

I have used WDFMT too. I don't have drive pro.

The WD 1006V-MM1, has no built in formatter from what i've read. It'll do the G=C:500 but i get this. I'll post all the pictures i can.

I remember to have had a similar problem with a MFM disk. If I remember right, the solution was to use another controller...

Did you connect all cables in the correct direction?

I am very happy with speedstor for testing
http://www.minuszerodegrees.net/software/speedstor.htm
But at the end it does nothing else than all other tools.

The debug-method only works with controllers with ROM on it. They are usually used in XTs only. Yours dont have a ROM.

You may also try to read the disk content with Norton Diskedit. Would be interesting if it gives an error on reading or if there is something on the disk...

The WD1006 controller does not need a BIOS, because it behaves like one or two IDE hard drives. Historically, it's the other way around: IDE drives emulate the WD1006 16-bit hard drive controller, and the IDE interface card just forwards the ISA cycles over the IDE cable to the hard drive. To use the WD1006 on a modern PCI mainboard, you need to make sure that the PCI onboard IDE controller is disabled (which most likely is the case, as you could not low level format your drive with the PCI onboard IDE in the way). Furthermore, the mainboard needs to forward IRQ14 from the ISA bus to the processor. I'm unsure whether you need to set something like "Assign IDE IRQs to ISA" in the BIOS setup to get this effect.

The old WD1006 controller is most likely not compatible to IDE block mode and definitely does not support 32-bit access. Make sure IDE block mode and IDE 32-bit mode is disabled in the BIOS setup. Also, the WD1006 does not provide identification data, so any IDE auto detection is not going to work. You need to enter the parameters of the drive manually in standard BIOS setup.

If you are unlucky, the modern IDE BIOS on the A440LX board is no longer compatible with the WD1006 controller - use one of the other machines if nothing else helps.

The 32-Bit Disk Access (aka 32BDA, FastDisk) driver was in fact designed for WD100x compatible controllers, rather than IDE. 😉
http://www.os2museum.com/wp/how-to-please-wdctrl/

Edit : That's of course, not really releated to the 32-Bit I/O option in CMOS Setup. 😀

Predator99 wrote on 2021-01-27, 08:06:

I remember to have had a similar problem with a MFM disk. If I remember right, the solution was to use another controller... […]
Show full quote

I remember to have had a similar problem with a MFM disk. If I remember right, the solution was to use another controller...

Did you connect all cables in the correct direction?

I am very happy with speedstor for testing
http://www.minuszerodegrees.net/software/speedstor.htm
But at the end it does nothing else than all other tools.

The debug-method only works with controllers with ROM on it. They are usually used in XTs only. Yours dont have a ROM.

You may also try to read the disk content with Norton Diskedit. Would be interesting if it gives an error on reading or if there is something on the disk...

All cables are correct with the pink line on the cable connected the rightway. I know my controller does not have a rom.
I will have a look at norton disk edit, if i can boot it from a dos floppy

mkarcher wrote on 2021-01-27, 19:11:

The WD1006 controller does not need a BIOS, because it behaves like one or two IDE hard drives. Historically, it's the other way around: IDE drives emulate the WD1006 16-bit hard drive controller, and the IDE interface card just forwards the ISA cycles over the IDE cable to the hard drive. To use the WD1006 on a modern PCI mainboard, you need to make sure that the PCI onboard IDE controller is disabled (which most likely is the case, as you could not low level format your drive with the PCI onboard IDE in the way). Furthermore, the mainboard needs to forward IRQ14 from the ISA bus to the processor. I'm unsure whether you need to set something like "Assign IDE IRQs to ISA" in the BIOS setup to get this effect.

The old WD1006 controller is most likely not compatible to IDE block mode and definitely does not support 32-bit access. Make sure IDE block mode and IDE 32-bit mode is disabled in the BIOS setup. Also, the WD1006 does not provide identification data, so any IDE auto detection is not going to work. You need to enter the parameters of the drive manually in standard BIOS setup.

If you are unlucky, the modern IDE BIOS on the A440LX board is no longer compatible with the WD1006 controller - use one of the other machines if nothing else helps.

System has two dedicated ISA slots, The onboard IDE is DISABLED in bios. C/H/S mode is selected in bios with the custom entry of 615/4/17 on primary master. I am not using an IDE drive, this is an MFM drive. However i will look for an IRQ setting.

I can Zero the drive, low level and destructive test the drive with no problems, sector verifications passes 9 tests.

Jo22 wrote on 2021-01-27, 21:19:

The 32-Bit Disk Access (aka 32BDA, FastDisk) driver was in fact designed for WD100x compatible controllers, rather than IDE. 😉
http://www.os2museum.com/wp/how-to-please-wdctrl/

Edit : That's of course, not really releated to the 32-Bit I/O option in CMOS Setup. 😀

I'm sorry but i don't understand. this. The disk has no operating system on it. As i said, i can't fdisk it to install anything.

A quick update.

I set some extra jumpers on the disk, this didnt change anything so i took the two back off and left the original one as it was.

I can see the disk in norton disk edit, I cannot write to the disk though I see 00 00 00 01 for all the sectors. I get Write failure. Norton disk doctor says there's a partition table error or something. It tries to fix it, says it's done it, but nothings changed.

I can write to the disk with destructive verify/format with seagate formatter 3 and 4. The same with ontrack and ezdrive. But anytime i try to write a physical bit of data, i get write errors. Either the controller is bad or the disk is stuffed. I have no otherway of trying to see if the drive works except if i set up the atari megafile with this disk in it and see what happens.

I think it is a motherboard BIOS issue with that Intel 440LX. Try the 486 motherboard. If the special HD utils can talk to the controller and it does see the HD at the low interrupt level then it has to be something about the motherboard BIOS or a setting (being Intel board and Phoenix bios your options are limited ! just my opinion) that does not to see the MFM controller+HD as a viable HD.
What model 486 do you have ? What version of DOS were you trying to FDISK with ?
Am wondering if the newer Intel BIOS even handles Int13 in a way an old controller can work with....