[rescue] Anybody remember MFM? (Durango Poppy II problem)

[Curtis H. Wilbar Jr.]

>From: Walter Belgers <walter+rescue at belgers.com>
>
>Mike Hebel wrote:
>> There's a good point.  If it's got a BIOS of some sort it might be 
>> missing the drive "type" - we used to have to set MFM according to 
>> manufacturer's settings and ESDI as drive 1 or 2 depending on the size 
>> of the drive.
>
>The drive is jumpered to be the first drive. When in maintenance shell,
>accessing /dev/rw0 or /dev/w0 results in the drive spinning up;
>accessing /dev/rw1 or higher results in a panic (duh).
>
>> No luck locating a low-level utility then?
>
>I have found something that _might_ be a low-level formatter. I also
>found a utility to read the EEPROM and it says it has a 7MB drive which
>is wrong. I cannot choose a 70MB drive which is in it. They guy who gave
>me the machine said it was operational when the system was shut off and
>no changes were made to the hardware config since. Also, the EEPROM disk
>selection utility only lists 7, 10, 20, 40MB drives. I do have a 21MB..
>does that count as 20? :)

Match up the parameters (if it gives them to you) for the 20, and compare
them to your 21 to see if they are compatable.  The sectors/track will
be as that is the same for all MFM drives (although I think it's 17
512 byte sectors, and 34 or so if your doing 256 byte sectors (unlikely)).

Can't hurt to put the 20 in, tell the system you have a 20, and try to
format it (well, not exactly.... if the tracks were way different or the
head count was different, you'd error... probably not damaging the drive,
but possible).

Is there an alternate choice for custom config where you can enter the
tracks (cylinders), heads, write precompensation cylinder, etc ??? If so
then you can look up the data for your 71MB drive and plug that info in.

>
>Walter.
>-- 
>Walter Belgers         "Si hoc signum legere potes, operis boni in rebus
>walter at belgers.com       Latinis alacribus et fructuosis potiri potes!" 
>_______________________________________________
>rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue

-- Curt

Curtis Wilbar
Hawk Mountain Networks
rescue at hawkmountain.net

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