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Dos 3.3 Question / Dos 5.0 Question

Booting from a DOS book disk and then using SSTOR on a seperate disk gave me that PARITY CHECK ERROR 1..

Will have to check the RAM....what am I looking for for "overlapping" RAM. The motherboard has 640K of RAM on it and there is no additional RAM card installed.
 
Smack2k said:
Booting from a DOS book disk and then using SSTOR on a separate disk gave me that PARITY CHECK ERROR 1
Click to expand...
Does the PARITY CHECK 1 error disappear if you run SpeedStor when the hard disk controller is removed from the 5160 ?

Does the running of other programs put on the boot floppy also result in PARITY CHECK 1 ?
 
After more testing, it definately appears the drive is toast as nothing i try from the above items got me any further in the process...

Gonna toss the LoTek Compact Flash IDE Adapter in here and use that.

Thanks so much for all the help and assistance...I really appreciate it.
 
OK, I was able to come upon another Drive Controller, Variation #3 on the minuszerodegress.net site's page with the drive controllers (62X0786 - Xebex and IBM - Supports 20 MB).

I tried it right out of the box (I got a 5160 case / Mobo and Controller from the University I work at's surplus dept) but got a 1701 error on boot. I dont know what switch settings to put the drive at for my Seagate 10 MB Drive.

Anyone know what the right settings are? Wanna make sure I have it set right before I decide its not working. It came from a working system supposedly, but I didnt get the HDD as our surplus pulls and destroys all those....
 
Smack2k said:
OK, I was able to come upon another Drive Controller, Variation #3 on the minuszerodegress.net site's page with the drive controllers (62X0786 - Xebex and IBM - Supports 20 MB).

I tried it right out of the box (I got a 5160 case / Mobo and Controller from the University I work at's surplus dept) but got a 1701 error on boot. I dont know what switch settings to put the drive at for my Seagate 10 MB Drive.

Anyone know what the right settings are? Wanna make sure I have it set right before I decide its not working. It came from a working system supposedly, but I didnt get the HDD as our surplus pulls and destroys all those....
Click to expand...
From post #52, your "Seagate 10 MB Drive" drive is a Seagate ST-412. The ST-412 has 306 cylinders, 4 heads, and a WPC of 128. Ignoring WPC (valid in a hobby environment), there is a match with row 0 in the 'switch settings' table at [here]. So, set to on both switches 1 and 2.

Cabling is per [here].

Then follow with:
STEP 1. Low level format of drive per [here]
STEP 2. Partitioning and high-level formatting per [here]
 
That was the jumper setting it was on when I tested it out of the box (1 and 2 were on).....got a 1701 error. With my other controller, I wasnt getting the error, so guessing the controller card that I got is bad / has issues...

Anything I can try outside of re-seating it / cleaning the contacts (I havent done either yet)?

OH well, at least it was free!!
 
Smack2k said:
That was the jumper setting it was on when I tested it out of the box (1 and 2 were on).....got a 1701 error. With my other controller, I wasnt getting the error, so guessing the controller card that I got is bad / has issues...
Click to expand...
It sounds to me like you saw the 1701 error at computer power-up time, then figured that because of the error, that there was no point in continuing on to do the low-level formatting, partitioning, high-level formatting steps.

Is that the case?

If so, you need to ignore the 1701 error for now. The 1701 is a generic error, with one possible cause being that the 'new' controller does not 'understand' the low-level format that has been laid down on the platters by a different controller. Try low-level formatting the drive using the new controller. If the 1701 error goes away, then the cause was a low-level format mismatch between controller and drive.
 
That is EXACTLY the case!!

I will give it a shot with the LLF again and see how it goes...thanks a ton for the information.....here's to hoping it all works!!
 
Same outcome as the other controller / HDD, LLF works fine, but FDISK gives an error reading the disk...

I dont know enough about MFM Drives to attempt getting inside to look for any issues, so I am guessing this one is toast?

2 Controllers, both LLF Fine, both dont error on boot after the LLF, both cant read the fixed disk trying FDISK...

Damn.....
 
It depends on the LLF. You can see the same failures with certain floppy formatters as well.

For example:

Formatter writes out the low-level pattern with IAM, IDAMs and DAMs, writes a test pattern to each sector, reads the sectors back. If no errors, moves to next cylinder and repeats until the whole disk is done.

What's wrong with this?

If the positioner has failed in any way, it won't be detectable. The disk will format perfectly and be utterly unusable.

Far better.

Write the entire disk with low-level pattern, advancing track by track. Move back to "home" and write each sector on the disk, advancing track by track. Move back to "home" and read each sector, advancing track by track.

Programmers are people too and sometimes (actually fairly often) don't think about modes of failure.
 
...or write your own formatter, particularly if you used your own controller implementation. My first hard disk on an IBM PC was an 8" Shugart SA-1000 with a WD 1001 controller hooked to a small ISA interface card. 4 whopping megabytes.
 
No luck again with Speedstor...with either controller, the device will LLF, reboot to DOS Boot Disk. Put in Speedstor Disk. Run sstor.exe. I get a Parity Error 1 and ?????????? as a result and the floppy drive light stays on and the drive seems to be running until I power off the computer.

Different Floppies / Different Controller, same results...not getting any information or anything period from SpeedStor but that Parity Error..

Could the motherboard itself cause any of this? I ask as I have another one, curious if I could / should try that or dont waste my time?
 
Smack2k said:
Could the motherboard itself cause any of this? I ask as I have another one, curious if I could / should try that or dont waste my time?
Click to expand...
Yes, parity errors are usually the result of bad RAM, or ocasionally faulty supporting logic chips on the motherboard. Have you tried running CheckIT?
 
Smack2k said:
I get a Parity Error 1 ... Could the motherboard itself cause any of this? I ask as I have another one, curious if I could / should try that or dont waste my time?
Click to expand...
I am sure that the following will answer that question.

The PARITY CHECK message is displayed by code in the 5160 motherboard ROM. It results when RAM support circuitry calculates the parity (odd) of a byte read from an address within conventional memory, AND, that parity does not match with the parity recorded for that address (recorded at the time that the byte was earlier written). Such a situation results in the motherboard generating a non-maskable interrupt (NMI) to the CPU, and as a result, the CPU jumps to the NMI handler routine (in motherboard ROM), and that generates either:
* "PARITY CHECK 1" if the address corresponds to motherboard RAM; or
* "PARITY CHECK 2" if the address corresponds to expansion card RAM.
The NMI handler routine then halts.

Doing some research, here are some known causes:

INTERMITTENT: Many years ago, there was someone on these forums who tracked down their intermittent PARITY CHECK messages to 'noisy' house electricity. The PARITY CHECK was coincident with the house air-conditioner's compressor pump kicking in.

INTERMITTENT: Intermittent RAM chip.
INTERMITTENT: Intermittent RAM support circuitry.
INTERMITTENT: Intermittent DMA circuitry (dynamic RAM refresh on a 5150/5160 is done via dummy DMA transfers).

INTERMITTENT: See [here].

POWER ON: See [here].

RUNNING A PROGRAM: A member found that 3C503.EXE had to be run using the /S switch, else PARITY CHECK 1 resulted. /S changes the DMA mode used by 3C503.EXE from 'demand' to 'single byte'. Demand mode must have been impacting on motherboard RAM refresh (on a 5150/5160, done via dummy DMA transfers).

WARM BOOT: Using IBM's '512KB/2MB Memory Expansion Option' card in the later models of the IBM AT causes PARITY CHECK 2.

Smack2k said:
... I get a Parity Error 1 and ?????????? as a result and the floppy drive light stays on and the drive seems to be running until I power off the computer.
Click to expand...
As SomeGuy wrote, it would be interesting to see whether or not CheckIt finds fault with your system (minus hard drive and its controller).
 
I ended up pulling all the cards out of my 5160 and lightly pushing on each socketed chip on the board and a few seemed to push down and sit in further than they were before. After that, I booted up and was able to get in to SStore with no issues, so looks like that was my issue. I will run through SSTOR itself this weekend and see what comes up in terms of issues with the HDD.
 
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