• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Hard disk bad track 0, date of manufacture codes

patscc said:
...on Allen's problem termination is not an issue ?
Click to expand...

Termination isn´t even an adjustable factor on DBA ESDI drives (¨ESDI¨ is a misnomer too). These 30Mb drives are very problematic nowadays (at over 20 years old, is it any wonder?). Much better to find the larger drive capacities (they came in 30, 40, 60, 80, 120, and 160Mb sizes) when you can´t switch to another controller type (read: SCSI) because of limited adapter slots.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Calling them ESDI is indeed a red herring. See the last topic on this page...
Click to expand...

Or change the tag like I did when I quoted you. The other sections of the page deal with the more standardized ESDI [EDIT: and MFM] adapter found on the Model 60 and 80. There was supposed to be a way to query that controller (and I was going to try it on the DBA ESDI, to see if it would give a response) for its microcontroller version (because there was an ECA on the early ESDI controllers) much like "SCSILVL" (http://www.IBMMuseum.com/projects/SCSILEVL/).
 
It was worth a try

It was worth a try

I suppose I will just have to try to liquidate this second IBM PS/2 Model 50Z without a working hard disk. I really wanted to try to fix any of the four 30 MB drives I have, since everything else in this PS/2 works fine.

It sounds like bad track 0 problems are difficult or impossible to fix (and not something I'm really trained to do). The discussion about whether these are really ESDI or MFM makes me disappointed in IBM. IBM didn't make these PS/2s easy to handle.

I do thank all of you for your insights.
 
modem7 said:
I guess it depends on the drive.
In a 2006 thread, two forum members were able to get around a track 0 problem on their ST-412s.
The thread is http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?t=3391 (from post #34 onwards).
Click to expand...

The real problem is that the "track 0 bad" message doesn't contain a lot of information. All the message really tells you is that something is wrong very early on in the formatting process.

Some PS/2 BIOSes have LL format support built in under INT 13H, Function 1AH. It might be worth trying the INT 13H BIOS routine; e.g. AX=1A00, CL = 0, DL = 0080 and see what comes back in AH.
 
Exactly, even though these drives were a kludge, they did give very good error codes to tell where they thought the problem was (and even saved it in a log many times, that could go through many power-cycles). As far as I went to diagnose many was swapping controller cards and platter assemblies, but you wouldn´t believe how many defunct parts I had to weed out. Just accept that the 30Mb versions are pretty crappy 20 years later, and the 80Mb+ types do much better.
 
Chuck(G) said:
...Some PS/2 BIOSes have LL format support built in under INT 13H, Function 1AH. It might be worth trying the INT 13H BIOS routine; e.g. AX=1A00, CL = 0, DL = 0080 and see what comes back in AH.
Click to expand...

Or just do CTRL-A from the Reference Diskette...
 
Thought ? (Ouch!)

Thought ? (Ouch!)

I was just wondering since these buggers seem to be more MFM than ESDI, how do they handle defect mapping ? Would there me a way to manually edit the defect table on these, or does the 'controller' (the thing the drive plugs into) store the defect table ?
patscc
 
Last edited:
The 1A format command allows the caller to specify an RBA table that can either be preset with values or updated as the format progresses.

What I don't know is if these units have the CBIOS ESDI support, since they're not really ESDI.

...or what an INT 13H, function 05h might do in any case.
 
Chuck(G) said:
...What I don't know is if these units have the CBIOS ESDI support, since they're not really ESDI...
Click to expand...

Once upon a time I was going to write a utility to determine the ESDI controller microcode version using one of those calls, and thus see how close the DBA ESDI was to the standard. But I haven´t even completed my version of ¨SCSILEVL¨, that does the same thing on IBM SCSI controllers. And now I have less time than before.
 
Not much more to do with reference disk

Not much more to do with reference disk

I did use Ctrl+A from the main menu of the reference disk to do a low-level format. I've done this many times with all four disks, and everytime the system stops formatting because it reaches a threshold of 800+ bad sectors. The bad sectors are probably a result of the inability of the system to read the fixed disk type (as it keeps telling me this). There doesn't appear to be an option to log errors during a low-level format.

When I test the fixed disk using the testing program in the reference disk, the program gives me error code 00175140 and tells me "error while reading fixed disk" and to "please replace integrated fixed disk C."

I have to admit I really don't know how to interpret or deal with "AX=1A00, CL = 0, DL = 0080 ..." I also don't have enough expertise and experience to physically fix these disks, if possible (as noted in other topics mentioned here). I will accept "that the 30Mb versions are pretty crappy 20 years later" as IBMMuseum says. I'm not going to fight 20 years.
 
IBMMuseum's probably right that this is beating a dead horse.

So much for the myth of the quality of construction of the PS/2 line, I guess.

Sorry that we couldn't help out more.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top