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Conner CP-2024 to make it alive

enrico said:
...What i wished to expose with the last pics i got using seagate utility on the commodore machine is that with both HD (the working and the fail ones) it seems that the machine recognize the hardware CHS and also their translate (see under che DOS column!)
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/dx54b5yg5zhw2hw/AAC-nEE8Z36w-Pgb4hN4l5r0a?dl=0
Click to expand...
I think what you have is one good drive and one bad one -- and that's it. It's quite possible for a drive's geometry to be detected any yet the drive itself is non-functional. Just because the drive reports its geometry does not mean that all is well in the actual functionality of the drive.
 
Stone, that's what I was trying to determine. The MCU on the drive doesn't need a working HDA to report geometry. What I was trying to determine was if the "fail" drive worked under any circumstances.
 
... However, the failing disk does not work on any machine under any circumstances?...

it is exact. But let me specify: at the begin when i try to test the fail drive on a p3 pc and it was not working. i thought to its geometry because the prior hardware CHS=653,2,32 then i discover that the correct one was CHS=615,4,17, but it was impossible to load DOS on a PC. At the end i come back to test that fail HD with correct CHS (identified automatically by) on the commodore machine. Nobody LLF program seems can do anything well even with the correct CHS. At this point it must be somthing wrong on the plates of this HD. i thought also to exchange theri elecrtonic card between the working HD and the fail HD, but i'm afraid to break even the working HD. So it bettere to think to a sd or CF to ide adapter.... ;)

Enrico
 
Enrico, I have attached a Conner specific low level formatting utility. If you think the drive needs a low level format then this would be the program to use.

View attachment CNRFMT.ZIP

I hope this works out for you.
 
Thanks for the conner LLF utility. I CANNOT BELIEVE!! Below the images they show that the LLF goes fine until the end.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/n58mmxxheco2f4d/AAC-mjn_hUi0JH3J71VHz3rBa?dl=0
I booted again the commodore via FD. Again the request to setup because the HD is failure. Then i continued pressing f1 and i launched FDISK and the answer was: error reading fixed disk.
What is it happening?
Enrico
 
Chuck(G) said:
I think the CP2024 is ignoring the format command, as many IDE drives do.
Click to expand...

You're probably right. Funny thing though is that in a pdf I have (REFRENC2.PDF) there is no mention of CP2024 even though it's supposed to have specs for all Conner IDE drives.
 
OK, while I'm seriously thinking to pass acurately with my car over the CP-2024 fail HD, may I ask to you: do you have a program for low-level format the following hard drives: Toshiba MK1122FC HDD2212 2.5 "IDE hard Drive?
Enrico
 
Stone said:
It's really not possible to LLF IDE drives at home. It normally requires a factory device/procedure to successfully LLF an IDE drive.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/geom/formatLow-c.html
Click to expand...

Yes but all on modern hard disk. Could i to intend that an hard of 1990 is not a modern hard disk and that i could do a LLF on a 286 or 286 machine ( i could also look for a pc xt or at....)... Or am i a bit crazy?

Enrico
 
Ok, now that i know this i can dedicate my time to other project.
I wish thank ALL of you for your time an patience.

Best regards from ITALY.

Enrico
 
Chuck(G) said:
Some early IDE drives (I'm thinking Maxtor) did respond to the "Format Track" command--and the result was usually disaster.
Click to expand...
Per the photos at [here], Seagate had put "Do not low-level format" stickers onto some of its drives.
Presumably that was because those drives may be damaged by a low-level format operation.
 
One wonders why they just didn't disable the LLF code in the drive firmware. Perhaps there was a combination of arguments that could perform some sort of factory-type initialization.

The bad old days of early IDE--drives that didn't work with other manufacturer's drives on the same controller (Conner was infamous for that). Wrong interpretation of the ATA standard. (Maxtor on early drives swapped the sector count words).

etc. etc.
 
My understanding was many of the early drives could be low level formatted, but if you got anything wrong they'd end up dead / difficult to get running again.

From memory when I did my ST351A/X (which had that sticker), I had to use a specific set of CHS values (which I guess puts the drive in to the right translation mode). In digging around I noticed references to Seagate's own format tool being able to do the factory format on the drives - but I never really dug any further - just got my drive working correctly and left it.

Also could've sworn Commodore had LLF instructions in their tech ref for their XT-IDE 8088 units. I'll have to see if I can find the PDF, but they usually had ST-125A/X or 157A/X etc in them (unless they used the cheaper aftermarket plugin card + Winchester that is).

Edit: although as far as this thread goes, don't LLF
 
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