Old harddrive (Miniscribe 8450 XT) not working from HeadStart Explorer XT PC

[gurby]

Yes these disks are original (and thus old:D)
I will try to create some boot disks with never DOS version.

Where can I get an old version of spinrite??

thanks

 

[Chuck(G)]

Well, if you can copy diagnostic software then you should also be able to create a DOS 6.22 boot disk with the standard tools from the 'net, no?.
I only ask because the DOS disk is the only thing that's common to both systems and they both have the same symptoms.

I don't know if Spinrite knows anything about XTIDE drives--remember this controller is bound to be very different.

Anyone got a Seagate ST05X controller? Does the BIOS have low-level formatting support?

 

[MikeS]

I don't know if Spinrite knows anything about XTIDE drives--remember this controller is bound to be very different.
Anyone got a Seagate ST05X controller? Does the BIOS have low-level formatting support?

Yes, quite possibly standard diagnostics won't work at a low level, but it can't hurt to try a few software things before giving up on the hardware and getting into a new set of challenges replacing the controller. The divide by zero error instead of a hardware error is curious; of course that may be the error code ;-)

I've got some pretty good diagnostic tools but can't find them at the moment.

 

[gurby]

By the way,
the machine has a XT Award BIOS.
Is there a way to get in something of a configuration menu??

 

[gurby]

Hi guys

As I told I have two of those HeadStart systems. One (the one I got first) is currently unscrewed to create the pictures earlier this topic :D.

At the other machine I booted DOS 6.22, ran FDISK and removed the primary partition. After rebooting no partition was present anymore but FDISK failed to create a new one. DEBUG g=c800:5 said: Divide by zero error.

Then I received both Disk Manager and SpinRite from one of you, Disk Manager failed to start (don't know why) but SpinRite ran(!) and told me: Spinrite cannot find a compatible sub-system blablabla so nothing to be found.
Then I switched the PC off, placed my 2nd harddrive (the one from the currently disassembled PC) and booted. Now SpinRite works! And is currently running the Analysis. So far this looks good.... Keep you updated!

 

[MikeS]

Sounds promising; fingers crossed.

 

[Marrr]

Anyone got a Seagate ST05X controller? Does the BIOS have low-level formatting support?

Yes, I formatted an ST-325X drive with ST05X recently.
Its formatter suggested some optimum interleave, I confirmed, and ended up with performance of about 20 KB/s. NU Calibrate wasn't able to find the optimum interleave, so I had to find it by trial and error.

 

[gurby]

Well, SpinRite was giving lots of bad sectors (starting on cylinder 0) and after 1 hr it was checking cylinder 1... At every error I had to hit a key for SpinRite to continue.
Currently I stopped the process and switched the PC off.

is there a way to let SpinRite perform a low level format automatically WITHOUT USER INTERVENTION after an error found ?
I just want the machine to work all night long

 

[gurby]

Hmm after that I ran SpeedStor, it found tons of bad sectors and when I wanted to mark them as defect it said: CONTROLLER ERROR
Will try some settings again this evening but it doesn't look very well ...

For the XT IDE card who do I need to contact about? Guess I'll need some...