bettablue
Veteran Member
Ed (my best friend) and I have been battling this for a couple of days now. Ed used to work on XT machines while in the military some 25 to 30 years ago, then afterward when working at some of the local major computer repair centers here in Las Vegas, so he has the background and knowlege, but even he has to admit that he hasn't seen one of these machines in so long that he's forgotten some of the routines. So, as of right now; we're both wondering if we missed something, and we need help finishing the drive setup on my IBM 5150 and 5161 expansion unit. Once we have the drives figured out, the system will be absolutely complete; FINALLY!
After getting the rest of the hardware installed into the expansion unit and configured, we got the system to boot from floppy without any errors. Neither the hard drives nor the controoler were installed yet. When we were sure that we had everything else configured properly, we went to the final piece; installation of the 2 hard drives and controller into the expansion unit so it could take over as the primary boot device. Drive "C" is a 10 Meg Full height Miniscribe MFM hard disk and drive "D" is a 30 Meg full height Control Data MFM hard disk.
Just to refresh, The Miniscribe drive was working fine with the Xebec controller I got from chuck, so we know the drive itself is good. Both drives are now connected to a Western Digital MFM controller card, (Short card) which was tested and proved to be working. According to k2, who I purchased this Control Data drive and WD controller from; the controller and Control Data drive are working, and pre-configured so that the control Data drive is set up as drive "D". k2 also tried to configure the controller to set the Miniscribe as drive "C", but without theactual drive in his hands, he could only guess at the proper settings. So k2 gave me a set of instructions to follow to perform the complete Low Level Format on the miniscribe drive in case the drive didn't work upon installation of the drives and controller. Well, the Miniscribe didn't like the controller. So we attempted the LLF.
When we first got everything assembled yesterday, we used cables that stone assembled for me; which was reassembled to help with the longer runs required by the expansion unit and between drives. When we ran Debug and started the Low Level format on the Miniscribe, it never really finished. We even let it run for over 8 hours before we decided to call it a day and stopped the process. While it was running though, the Miniscribe drive seemed like it was doing everything properly, but it was running s-o s-l-o-w-l-y. :sad3:
Today, Ed is going to swap out the MFM cable and replace it with one that k2 provided with the controller. and try again. However, due to some major health issues, my IBM 5150 system is at his place so he can work on it without me being in the way. (Trust me, that's a good thing) So after a doctor's appointment, he plans on starting again later this afternoon.
Right now, we would like any information, or ideas to help get us through this last part of setting up my system. I'm looking up more resources on performing a llf on the miniscribe drive, and I'm looking for specs on both the WD controller, and the drive. So, does anyone have any other ideas? Please PM if you would like to email Ed directly. He'll like the additional help too. So far, it looks like we did everything properly, but somehow I think we missed something major.
Thanks everybody. (Done in my best Dr. Bob Imitation)
:clap2:
After getting the rest of the hardware installed into the expansion unit and configured, we got the system to boot from floppy without any errors. Neither the hard drives nor the controoler were installed yet. When we were sure that we had everything else configured properly, we went to the final piece; installation of the 2 hard drives and controller into the expansion unit so it could take over as the primary boot device. Drive "C" is a 10 Meg Full height Miniscribe MFM hard disk and drive "D" is a 30 Meg full height Control Data MFM hard disk.
Just to refresh, The Miniscribe drive was working fine with the Xebec controller I got from chuck, so we know the drive itself is good. Both drives are now connected to a Western Digital MFM controller card, (Short card) which was tested and proved to be working. According to k2, who I purchased this Control Data drive and WD controller from; the controller and Control Data drive are working, and pre-configured so that the control Data drive is set up as drive "D". k2 also tried to configure the controller to set the Miniscribe as drive "C", but without theactual drive in his hands, he could only guess at the proper settings. So k2 gave me a set of instructions to follow to perform the complete Low Level Format on the miniscribe drive in case the drive didn't work upon installation of the drives and controller. Well, the Miniscribe didn't like the controller. So we attempted the LLF.
When we first got everything assembled yesterday, we used cables that stone assembled for me; which was reassembled to help with the longer runs required by the expansion unit and between drives. When we ran Debug and started the Low Level format on the Miniscribe, it never really finished. We even let it run for over 8 hours before we decided to call it a day and stopped the process. While it was running though, the Miniscribe drive seemed like it was doing everything properly, but it was running s-o s-l-o-w-l-y. :sad3:
Today, Ed is going to swap out the MFM cable and replace it with one that k2 provided with the controller. and try again. However, due to some major health issues, my IBM 5150 system is at his place so he can work on it without me being in the way. (Trust me, that's a good thing) So after a doctor's appointment, he plans on starting again later this afternoon.
Right now, we would like any information, or ideas to help get us through this last part of setting up my system. I'm looking up more resources on performing a llf on the miniscribe drive, and I'm looking for specs on both the WD controller, and the drive. So, does anyone have any other ideas? Please PM if you would like to email Ed directly. He'll like the additional help too. So far, it looks like we did everything properly, but somehow I think we missed something major.
Thanks everybody. (Done in my best Dr. Bob Imitation)