SpidersWeb
Veteran Member
As part of a recent haul I got a T5200/100 with a seized hard drive. I got it freed up and it runs great except the drive fails to write 90% of the time.
I looked around and didn't have a spare CP3104E laying about and didn't want to downgrade to my spare CP344, which turned out to have quite a few bad sectors anyway.
I did have a spare CP30174E though, formatted it as 930/8/46 and checked it's operation on a spare 486. Rather than going the XTIDE or SCSI routes, I thought I'd try the old ROM table method which as far as I'm aware has been successful for others.
My ROM is the exact same verison as what's on minuszerogdegrees for the T5200C - a Phoenix based BIOS. I did a byte by byte comparison and it's identical.
I changed entry #6 To: 00 87 03 08 00 00 FF FF 00 00 00 00 00 87 03 2E
Which is 903 cyl, 8 heads, 46 SPT. I ran Toshiba's HDDID tool as a sanity check, and it gave me the same figures 0387 0008 and 2E.
I updated the checksum byte, and wrote the ROM to a 27C1024. Installed in the machine, and it booted fine, and my Type 6 was now 162MB! 903 / 8 / 46 - wee!
But with the CP30174E installed and the machine set to it's new Type 6, it complains about Fixed Disk Failure and leaves the HDD light illuminated. It automatically changes the CMOS entry to "No Drive" in this process.
I then install a CP344, and the CMOS complains about a hard drive error [despite being set to no drive] - turns out it's automatically changed it to "Type 6" - where the old CP344 setting once was...
The original CP3104E - no worries, auto detects as type 9 and boots :/
What kind of voodoo is this?
Those of you who successfully did this modification - which drive type did you override? Which BIOS version was used?
I'm wondering if overriding Type 9 or using the later T5200/200 BIOS [which I can't find] may solve it.
I looked around and didn't have a spare CP3104E laying about and didn't want to downgrade to my spare CP344, which turned out to have quite a few bad sectors anyway.
I did have a spare CP30174E though, formatted it as 930/8/46 and checked it's operation on a spare 486. Rather than going the XTIDE or SCSI routes, I thought I'd try the old ROM table method which as far as I'm aware has been successful for others.
My ROM is the exact same verison as what's on minuszerogdegrees for the T5200C - a Phoenix based BIOS. I did a byte by byte comparison and it's identical.
I changed entry #6 To: 00 87 03 08 00 00 FF FF 00 00 00 00 00 87 03 2E
Which is 903 cyl, 8 heads, 46 SPT. I ran Toshiba's HDDID tool as a sanity check, and it gave me the same figures 0387 0008 and 2E.
I updated the checksum byte, and wrote the ROM to a 27C1024. Installed in the machine, and it booted fine, and my Type 6 was now 162MB! 903 / 8 / 46 - wee!
But with the CP30174E installed and the machine set to it's new Type 6, it complains about Fixed Disk Failure and leaves the HDD light illuminated. It automatically changes the CMOS entry to "No Drive" in this process.
I then install a CP344, and the CMOS complains about a hard drive error [despite being set to no drive] - turns out it's automatically changed it to "Type 6" - where the old CP344 setting once was...
The original CP3104E - no worries, auto detects as type 9 and boots :/
What kind of voodoo is this?
Those of you who successfully did this modification - which drive type did you override? Which BIOS version was used?
I'm wondering if overriding Type 9 or using the later T5200/200 BIOS [which I can't find] may solve it.
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