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IBM 1501492 MFM Hard Disk Drive

J

JDT

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My recently aqcuired IBM 5160 had a IBM 1501492 MFM HD controller w/ a Miniscribe 10MB drive. Damn thing will NOT boot for nuthin! The machine can boot to floppy and then see the drive, read and write with no problems. I even tried fdisking the drive, formating and made it a bootable partition w/ system files.. After post, it tries booting to floppy, if no floppy it will hang. If I remove the hdd controller and it boots to BASIC... there dont apear to be any jumpers, switches etc.. I did pop 2 socketed chips out and reseat them.. didnt help. Any ideas?
 
I have seen those symptoms before. It happened when none of the partition/s on the hard drive was marked as active. You've FDISK'ed the hard drive again and if you've chosen to create just one partition (of the entire drive's available space), FDISK would have made the partition active. So I think you can rule out 'no partition is active'.

For a 5150/5160, the low level routines to access the hard drive are in the ROM on the controller. If you can read/write the drive from a DOS boot diskette, then that suggests that the controller is serviceable.

According to what I've read (including posts on this forum), track 0 of the hard drive needs to be serviceable for the drive to boot. I've never been in that situation. I would expect that FDISK or FORMAT would have indicated such a problem. Someone else on this forum might be able to confirm that. Probably good to use SPEEDSTOR (or a similar tool) to check out the hard drive.

After the POST has completed and the booting process is starting, do you see the access light on the hard drive flash at all?
 
modem7 said:
After the POST has completed and the booting process is starting, do you see the access light on the hard drive flash at all?
Click to expand...

Yes, the LED blinks for a fraction of a second and the machine hangs, but can be Ctrl-Alt-Del'd to reboot
 
The MiniScribe 30MB drive in my Amstrad PC1640 had a similar problem when I first got it. After low-level formatting the drive it has been absolutely fine...

Just boot to BASIC from a floppy and run DEBUG

G=C800:5

and it (should) initialise the low-level format routines. You will need to enter the drive parameters, as well as any defects the drive has. The defect map will be printed on a label on the top of the drive.
 
Run up FDISK and verify that the partition is flagged as active (Status=A). Just to be sure.

Missing the switch bank, your IBM controller is the early one that supports type 1 drives only (Type 1 = 306 cylinders, 4 heads and a write pre-compensation cylinder of 128). What is the model of the 10MB Miniscribe you have as there were quite a few models? Some will not properly work with that controller, but if you had one of those, I would have expected you to have seen errors during the format.

I think it would be good to rule out a hardware issue at this time. I suggest that you put a hard drive utility such as SpeedStor 6.05 (or similar) onto a boot diskette and test the controller/drive via the utility's diagnostic section.

Dongfeng's "G=C800:5" unfortunately isn't going to work with your early IBM controller. To do a low-level format, you'll need the Advanced Diagnostics Disk for the XT, or one of the third-party hard drive utilities of the time. I use SpeedStor.
 
modem7 said:
Dongfeng's "G=C800:5" unfortunately isn't going to work with your early IBM controller. To do a low-level format, you'll need the Advanced Diagnostics Disk for the XT, or one of the third-party hard drive utilities of the time. I use SpeedStor.
Click to expand...

Ahh yes, that totally slipped my mind! Although would a MiniScribe drive be a standard fitment by IBM - I thought they only used ST-412's. Do you have the model number of the drive?

If you do need the Advanced Diagnostics Disk, I have it... PM me :)
 
dongfeng said:
Ahh yes, that totally slipped my mind! Although would a MiniScribe drive be a standard fitment by IBM - I thought they only used ST-412's.
Click to expand...
Even though the Miniscribe is not the Seagate ST412 drive that IBM attaches to that particular controller, the Advanced Diagnostics Disk for the XT won't care. The low-level formatting code on the disk communicates with the controller and it is the controller that communicates with the drive. As far as the controller is concerned, it will be happy with any drive attached that is ST412 compatible (or falls within what Xebec/IBM expects to be attached).
 
Hi, I have a problem with the harddisk of my XT aswell. The XT was in non-working condition, and now after repairing the PSU, FDD and low-level formatting the HDD in a different machine, the only part that won't work is the HDD controller.

The controller is a Xebec I think, and the IBM has a 20MB ST-225 harddisk drive. A HDD utility tells me the HD is configured for half the capacity (a 10 meg drive).

I read in a PC magazine of 1989 about the DEBUG/G=C800:5 functionality but now I read here that it won't work.

Dongfeng, is the utility on that disk capable of reconfiguring the Rom of the HD controller for a 20 meg drive?

By the way, I got the XT with the 20 MB drive, though I guess it is not original because of the controller keeping looking at it as a 10 meg drive.

Thanks!
 
If you are using an original IBM Xebec controller, there are two main types. The first can only be used for a 10MB drive. The second looks identical, but has a switch block on it and can be used on other drives (I've yet to find a list of the switch settings, but my XT with the original WD25 20MB drive has one of these cards). The XT Advanced Diagnostics disk works fine to LL format my 20MB drive.

You may find that you have the original 10MB controller card and someone replaced the original 10MB ST-412 with an ST-225 in the past. If this is the case then you can only use the drive at 10MB.
 
The card has no dip switches, so that sucks then I guess. I had a newer controller but lost it :(

Anyway, how do I get the drive to work at 10 megs? I tried to configure it as a standard (10MB) drive with a Miniscribe utility (identical to the Seagate utility except for the company name), but the drive won't work properly that way. The LED lights up but the drive does nothing useful.
 
Just connect it up and LL format with the Advanced Diagnostic Disk :)

Almost certainly the original drive was a full-height Seagate ST-412.
 
I've yet to find a list of the switch settings
Click to expand...

Switches 1 & 2 configure drive 0 (C:)
Switches 3 & 4 configure drive 1 (D:)

0 0 = Type 13 (e.g. WD25)
0 1 = Type 2 (e.g. ST-225)
1 0 = Type 16
1 1 = Type 1 (e.g. ST-412)

Source: Upgrading & Repairing PC's (Mueller), 5th Edition, page 763
 
The PDF version of the book (revision 8 ) has had it's link posted here many times. Use the search function on the forum. I know that I've pointed it out to you a few times.


Mike
 
I have the 8th edition of the book in PDF, but it doesn't have the switch settings listed. There is a small paragraph about the controllers though. It seems that the earlier books included a lot more detail.
 
I have the 8th edition of the book in PDF, but it doesn't have the switch settings listed.
Click to expand...
I have the first, fifth, sixth, eighth ... editions. The switch settings disappeared in either the seventh or eight edition.

It seems that the earlier books included a lot more detail.
Click to expand...
It depends on the subject. As editions passed, some subjects were expanded on, but yes, you see that bits and pieces considered a little too old at the time get dropped.
 
Dongfeng, I haven't received your email yet. Did you send it already?

By the way, I have looked it up and my controller card that won't work is an IBM 1501492 too.

By the way, I looked some thing up and eg. the WD14C17-JT card can be configured by soldering resistants on the board, or by taking resistants away. But also that seems to be impossible with the IBM controller card (did I already mention that I think that card sucks? :p)
 
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