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Some problems with my 5160.

DOS lives on!!

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I just got a new IBM 5160. But, as the careful user that I am, I don't want to turn it off without parking the hard drive. How would I go about parking it, as I can't find any parking utility in the DOS folder. I think it has IBM DOS 3.30 with an IBM WD12 hard drive. Anyway, I have to move it later this week, so what about SHIPDISK. I know you're supposed to boot off the diagnostic disk to run it. The problem is that whenever I insert the diagnostic disk and restart it, it comes up with a "Disk Boot Failure" message. When I try to restart after that, it just freezes up.:mad: Anyone know what is causing this, as I have to move it a long distance soon and don't want to ruin the hard drive.
 
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It sounds like the diagnostic disk is not bootable. Can't you just stick it in (after booting) and type the name of the disk parking program? If not, there's lots of head park programs to grab off the net. I'm sure both Garbo and Simtel each have several.
 
In another post,
http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?22341-How-to-Park-Fixed-Disk-Head-on-IBM-5160,
there seemed to be mixed suggestions. Pearce_jj mentioned that it was ok to just run SHIPDISK from the command prompt. However, Per said the follwing, "Just make sure you run it from within the diagnostic program. If you just run shipdisk.com from the command line, you may risk corrupting parts of your HDD. IBM posted a warning about this at some point.

What I think is the problem is that shipdisk.com takes the state of the system for granted. By booting to the diagnostic program, you put the system in a known state which is known to always be safe when running shipdisk.com, but if you first boot to DOS and load the program, your system may be in such a state which may cause shipdisk.com to malfunct and corrupt the drive."

Which one should I follow?
 
There are plenty of disk parking programs--but you may not need one. Non-self-parking disks weren't around for more than a couple of years after the 5160 debuted. Self-parking drives of that era use the drive spin-down to gently move the heads into a parked position.

What kind of drive do you have on the 5160?
 
MFM disks that didn't self park were certainly on sale well into the late 80s if not early 90s.

As stated, the only "official" way to park the ST412 drive is to reboot from the diagnostics disks and 'prepare system for moving' (or something like that) - you can find the disk image here.

BTW I've found system performance can be improved considerably setting buffers=(at least 30) on these old systems; it reduces the number of seeks to the FAT.
 
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I assume the diagnostic disk is on a DD disk. If a HD disk is used in a DD drive, then read errors are expected.

One suggestion is that you run Command.com from the diagnostics disk after booting from HDD or another disk. This would take over the system as if the bootdisk had properly booted, allthough it may in rare cases cause some problems with existing terminate-and-stay-resident programs.
 
Another thing,
It will read the diagnostic and the exploring your XT disk and show the directory of both, but won't boot from them. Do you think running CHKDSK or another utility would correct the problem and allow the computer to boot from the disks?
 
http://ps-2.kev009.com:8081/pccbbs/refdisks/mod30286.exe

Head parking software for an AT, should work... :thumbsup:

If some odd reason that doesnt work, this should... Its a bit more flexible , but requires more effort to use. Guess just make a bat file with it. Its great for odd cyl drives though, allowing you to set the sector the park the heads. :)

ftp://ftp.eunet.bg/pub/simtelnet/msdos/diskutil/cpark.zip

No it doesn't--you specify a cylinder, not a sector.

All parking programs I've ever seen depend on the correct operation of INT 13H, function 0Ch--"seek". And there's the problem.

The BIOS for some early controllers ignored function 0Ch, it's pretty much useless, as Read and Write have an implied seek. AFAIK, no DOS driver uses it.

The other issue is that the high cylinder for a drive as reported by the BIOS may not in fact be in the landing zone--and the BIOS may have no way to reach it. Consider, for example, drives with 1224 cylinders. They're not rare--I have several of them in MFM. Several controllers (e.g. WD 1006V-SR2) accommodate this by borrowing a couple of high-order bits from the head byte (register DH). But if a program doesn't know this, it will park the heads right in the middle of data.

Some other controllers (e.g. DTC) allowed a user to split a large drive (remember that the early limit on drive size was 16MB). So parking at the high end of the first part of a "split" drive is useless.

IBM should have specified a BIOS command to park a drive if that was a concern of theirs. Just another sign of the early "not ready for prime time" thinking that went into the PC initially.

But why does the OP worry about parking the HD before powering down? Parking was normally done if the machine was going to be moved.
 
Does the IBM WD12 automatically park itself, or do I really need a parking utility?

Short answer--no, the WD12 is not self-parking. However, note that IBM recommended parking only if the system was to be relocated--i.e. handed over to some UPS gazoonie for shipment to Ulan Bator. Note that the advanced diagnostics says "Prepare system for relocation". It's notable that the very-thorough diagnostic procedures nowhere specify that the disk is to be parked prior to removal from the chassis.

If this is staying in your home or office, I wouldn't bother. The design life of the WD-12 was 5 years, so any functionality is a gift from heaven.

---------------------
It seems that any of several 5160/5150-related questions that have been asked recently could have been solved with a peek into the IBM reference material, such as the PCXT technical reference or hardware maintenance publications. Aren't those still online?
 
I would (and do) though, since it leaves the heads right in the middle of the disk away from trouble and maximising the likelihood that the motor will be able to overcome any 'stiction' next time it's used.
 
So I don't really need to park it prior to just shutting down.

"Shutting down?" :)

Ask yourself if the original user of the 5160 ever did that 25 years ago. Try to find a mention of making a habit of that in any of the PC magazines.

No, nobody "shut down" a PC in those days. When you were through, you ended the program you were working with and flipped the Big Red Switch.

I worked for a manufacturer of small computers before the PC came out. We used the SA-4000 series 14" Winchesters, then eventually, some of the early 5.25" hard drives. We didn't recommend parking the hard drive heads unless the machine was to be relocated (i.e. tossed into someone's car trunk and driven over railroad crossings). We did provide the service personnel with a program that did head parking in case the system had to be sent back to the factory for servicing. We called it "ship".
 
We called it "ship".
Hence the name SHIPDISK. Anyway, I was going to park it before I move it tomorrow, but the diagnostic disk which contains SHIPDISK doesn't want to boot. It will however read from the disk in dos, but I don't want to run shipdisk from the command prompt as I've heard it can damage parts of the hard drive. Do you think running chkdsk would fix the disk so it would become bootable?
 
Have you tried to run fdisk, then set active the partion?
After restarting, have you tried " fdisk /mbr " after formatting w/ system files ?


No it doesn't--you specify a cylinder, not a sector.

Thank you for the correction! Was still waking up when i posted that LOL! Must have needed more coffee. xD

As for the utility, your correct in the user is limited to the accessible cylinders the controller can provide.
 
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