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Hard drive problems (again)

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josephdaniel

Experienced Member
Joined
Jul 3, 2012
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Location
Florence, Texas, United States
Ok so I have has my hard drive formatted and partitioned for a while now but I just noticed that my computer says I only have a 10 MB hard disk? I tryed re-lowlwevel formatting it and doing all of the steps but after doing everything it was still only 10 MB and I have a 20 MB hard disk? Can someone look over this and tell me if im doing this right?

Debug
-g=c800:5
format c with interleave of 3
FDISK
partition full HDD
Format c: /s

Hard drive : segate st-225 20mb hard drive
Controller card: WD 1002-wx2-f002 revision G

Thanks in advance
 
Interesting, It's a RLL controller and I don't think the ST225 is a RLL hard drive. I am trying to remember but I think on some it asks you if you are dynamically configuring the drive. If it does that's where you can enter the specs for the ST225
 
I thought you could use a rll controller with a mfm drive? Also none of the controller cards that are in google search are like what is in my xt it is a full length card here is a picture I took when I first got the computer.

Foto (3).jpgFoto (2).jpg
 
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WD1002-WX2, not to be confused with the WD1002S-WX2 (a later and shorter card), or confused with any other WD controller that starts with "WD1002".

About 1983/1984 vintage.
No configuration jumpers/switches.

Some text on the Internet: "since my 30 year old, whopping big 10MB Tandon 252 hard disk and wd 1002-wx2 controlled are dead"

I have never encountered an autoconfigure/dynamic hard disk controller of XT class that was also full length.
Maybe the WD1002-WX2 only supports MFM drives of: 306 cylinders / 4 heads / 17 SPT
 
josephdaniel said:
I thought you could use a rll controller with a mfm drive? Also none of the controller cards that are in goole search are like what is in my xt it is a full leingth card here is a picture I took when I first got the computer.View attachment 12251View attachment 12252
Click to expand...

I'm going through this myself right now. I have a Mitsubishi MR535-U00 40 MB hdd on a DTC 7287 RLL controller. By formatting as RLL the 40MB drive becomes 60 MB (usually a 50% increase) But the drive has to be certified as RLL, since it will require greater precision. This is all on my 386 20mhz system. (Micronics AT Babyboard with 2 MB of ram.) The controller has a bios which enables it to low level format as rll. This is how I bought the system back in 1989.

I have just added a secondary IDE card so that I can backup my MFM drive (and eventually get completely off of it.) The secondary IDE card is a "GSI Model 18 intelligent IDEa" It just came yesterday, and the 120 MB Conner IDE hdd arrived today. I just got it installed and voila, it COEXISTS with the mfm/rll drive and controller! What a great card! It has a Bios which is specially designed to handle mfm rll drive/controllers. I had to first disable the rll controller's BIOS Prom so that the Model 18 could take over. Now I'm waiting for a 3.5" floppy drive so I can begin doing a clone of the mfm drive to the conner drive. :p
 
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Stone said:
This is what I don't follow. Why do you need a floppy to clone one HD to another HD when both HDs are already in the same system?
Click to expand...

I'm going to use Clone Maxx on a floppy. Because this is a dual booting mfm drive, I want to clone the whole disk so it is still dual booting (Dos 3.3 & PC-MOS 4.0) on the new IDE drive.

Here's a shot of the boot up bios message from the GSI IDEa Model 18

gsim18 001.jpg

I am SO impressed with this card. Once I get the hdd's the way I want them, I'm going to remove the Model 18 and the RLL controller/MFM drive and replace them with a simple IDE floppy IO card, with 2 Conner hdds, and 2 floppies. What really makes me happy is that this GSI card is not causing any interference with the Stargate multi-port card/serial port expander setup under MOS. PC-MOS is functioning perfectly with both the MFM drive and the Conner IDE drive in place. :D
 
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I haven't been following this, but a couple of things occur to me.

What is your CMOS drive type set to? Are you perhaps running a version of MS-DOS with MSD.EXE? If so, what does it say about your hard drive?
 
I mean the type of drive set in the BIOS setup (the drive type is recorded in battery-backed CMOS memory). Why would MS-DOS 2.1 recognize anything larger than 16MB, by the way? Wasn't that the 2.1 limit?
 
I don't rember there being battery's on the 5160 I just saw dip switches but I never saw a bettery unless it is embeded in a chip?
Yes the limit with 2.01 is 16 but the extra 6 MB really makes a difference when your making a computer with bunches of software and games
 
Ah, okay, I'm getting your post confused with BillyRay. No CMOS or battery on 5160, right.

Try running the attached program and see what it says about the drive. It's small and should give you the disk geometry as seen by DOS.
 

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Well, it might be a little longer than tonight I just ordered a zip drive with a bunch of disks in eBay with a parallel port. I have a USB one around here somewhere within 250 feet (if only I could remember where)
 
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