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Seagate ST-412 issue.

Luke

Experienced Member
Joined
Apr 3, 2006
Messages
418
Location
Poland
Drive sometimes run propetly, and sometimes don't.
When it don't work propetly I can't boot from it and I can't run files from it
('General failure reading...' or 'Data error reading...' - depend on DOS version that I boot from diskette)
but I can dir directories and acces them.

I have done all tests by SpeedStor utility (including various media analise tests), and low level formated.
I made partition and formatted it. Still no bad sectors.

I'll try DOS 3.30, mayby it will help like in canuck's problem. Any other ideas?
 
Well since the problem is analog, maybe it's a heating issue. It might also be a friction issue. Have you looked at the internals of the drive & checked if everything was moving properly?
 
Is that wise? If you are reffering to opening up the actual drive, dust and everything could cause havoc in there, plus drives are really, really hard to open unless you have the specific tool to do so.

If not I'll just go back to sleep.

zzz...
 
You really can't see inside of a hard disk without opening it, and opening it is a very very bad idea.

As Modem7 suggested these things change alignment on the heads when they warm up. You should let the drive spin for a while and the low-level format when it is at 'operating' temperature. That might help clear things up.

Also, early Seagate drives are well known for 'stiction' problems. Running the LL format a few times might help spread some of the lubricant on the platters more uniformly.

Remember, it's an old beast. They were designed to last for 5 years, not 25. A hard drive only has to last long enough for the next generation of hard drives to make it obsolete.
 
Hehe, I'am not going to open it ;).
Before low level format computer was powered up for ~10 min and drive was tested for ~20 min i think, so it was warm.
 
It looks like drive need to warm up for a while.

The drive was cold, I powered up XT and it siad: Disk boot failure.
So I booted from floppy and few times I was trying to run apps from HDD.
After that I've done soft reset and DOS 2.10 booted from hard disk.
 
Do you have some other old computer in which to test the HDD?

Your HDD might actually be fine. Your related thread in the "PC and Clones" genre indicates that you are seeing intermittent keyboard, diskette drive and HDD errors, ie. you are seeing system-wide problems.

Therefore I would consider the PSU and motherboard as the most likely causes. On the motherboard, intermittent or (seemingly intermittent) problems can be caused by faulty RAM. Remember that the RAM test done by the POST (power on self test) is quite crude. And if the RAM is intermittent, the POST is less likely to detect it.

You could also have an intermittently faulty HDD or floppy which is occasionally shorting out the power supply for milliseconds at a time.
I consider that unlikely.

How about removing the HDD, then running an XT diagnostic tool for six hours, with the diagnostic just doing motherboard tests.
 
It's 6 hours?! Lot of time...

FDD is good I think, something is only with connectors - now it works fine.
It's Tandon TM-100-2A commonly used in IBM XTs.
 
Luke, your XT sounds identical to mine. 256k mainboard, ST-412 and Tanton floppy drive! I noticed on the Tandon that the power pins, one of them had broken free from the solder. I fixed that now :)

With the ST-412 disconnected completely, can you boot into Cassette BASIC without errors? And with a boot disk, to a DOS prompt?
 
It was the most common configuration I think, you have 5153 or 5154 monitor?
I could have similar problem, I must check the drive!

I haven't tried to boot to C-BASIC but I can boot OS from diskette without any problems.
I've done Diag Disk tests - it said that something is wrong with CRC (something connected with FDD I think).
Diskette that I've used for test had many bad sectors...
Drive don't make any problems when I use it now.
 
Propably I finally located where the issue is.
Drive don't recalibrate his heads at startup.

After booting up from diskette I tried to format drive - it said: 'Media type invalid or track 0 bad - disk unusable'.
But you know DOS sometimes says strange things,
I have started disk diag program and runned seek test, then started format and... it formatted disk good.
 
I have an identical machine and a similar hard drive issue. I can format it (low level). It just keeps telling me that track 0 is bad afterwards. Looks like the magnetic layer got to weak.
 
I can format the drive, magnetic layer is fine I think (I made various media analyse tests).
The problem is that drive need to warm up it's heads
or maybe set to correct aligment before I can write something to it.

I'll low level format it again.
What interleave should I select?
 
I'am slowly becoming mad with this drive :(.
Getting one to replace or even getting second flopy is nearly impossible here in Poland.

So. Really noone know where could be the issue? It's not recalibrating heads.

Btw. happy birthday bbcmirco ;).
 
Does the ST-412 use a stepper motor to position the heads? If so, perhaps the lubricant in the stepper motor has become dried and stiff, making it difficult to move the heads or position them correctly.

I'm not really sure how one would go about removing the old grease and putting in new...

Kent
 
Yes, it use stepper motor.

Can I replace this ST-412 by other MFM drive? Would 40 Meg HDD work with 5160's controller (formatted to 10 Megs of course)?

Drive is dirty but I need canned air to clean it. I will get it, clean drive and change cables.
 
Last edited:
Luke said:
It was the most common configuration I think, you have 5153 or 5154 monitor?

The previous owner of my XT had upgraded it to a VGA card, so it now uses a VGA display. If I can find an original IBM 5153 or 5154, I will change it back to that :)
 
I'm guessing by your posts that your keyboard error has gone, and that the 601 error was a caused by a bad diskette ("Diskette that I've used for test had many bad sectors...").
That is, your only problem now is intermittent HDD operation ("Drive sometimes run properly, and sometimes don't. ")

I don't think another low-level format is going to do anything. But if you want to, note that changing the interleave is not going to affect the ABILITY of the drive to read/write data - it will just affect overall read/write speed. Just accept the default interleave at this time. You can worry about getting the optimum interleave later.

I think you are at the point of either a) testing the ST-412 in another computer, or b) as you've suggested, replacing the ST-412 with another MFM drive.

As for replacing the ST-412 with another MFM drive:

In an XT, the type of HDD controller you have determines what you can do. The early XT's (with an ST-412) were supplied with a HDD controller that could only support type 1 drives (drives that have 306 cylinders, 4 heads, 17 sectors per track, and a write pre-compensation cylinder of 128). You have probably got that controller.

Can you send a picture of the controller?

If you have that particular controller, then for diagnostic purposes, you can substitute the ST-412 with an MFM drive that has 306 or more cylinders, and has 4 or more heads. The controller will limit the use of the drive to 10MB. This is not a good long term solution because larger drives are sure to use a different write-precompensation cylinder.

If you have a different controller, it will probably support larger drives.
 
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