On Tue, 26 Sep 2017, emanuel stiebler via cctalk wrote:
trying to check some MFM drives I have on my shelf.
Have an IBM PC AT, with an WD1003 controller in it.
So, what is the best(?) or easiest piece of software,
to format the drives, check for bad blocks, etc.?
I think I remember something like "ontrack" for doing it,
but didn't touch PCs for a while ...
Ideas? Links?
IBM did not supply a low-level FORMAT with the 5150, 5160, 5170.
And there was no hard drive low-level FORMAT supplied in MS-DOS/PC-DOS.
The PC-DOS/MS-ODS FORMAT.COM/FORMAT.EXE did NOT do a low-level format!
A brand new drive came unformatted, and needed
1) low level format
2) partitioning (FDISK)
3) high level format (Directory creation, etc.) (FORMAT.COM/FORMAT.EXE)
About the time of IDE drives, drives began to be shipped low-level
formatted, and sometimes even partitioned and high level formatted.
It was not rare for a drive to need to be RE-formatted.
And, on 5160, low-level format was often incompatible between different
controllers!
There was no low level FORMAT in the OS, nor in the "DIAGNOSTICS" that
came with the machine.
There was an option in IBM's "ADVANCED DIAGNOSTICS", which was not
supplied with the computer, and was not always readily available.
Many hard drive controllers had a crude low level format program in their
ROMs. With DEBUG, you could JMP to it, typically
G=C800:5 although some were C800:0 or other offsets. U C800:0 to look at
the code and find it. It would not over-ride the CMOS parameters, nor do
much else.
The best aftermarket software for formatting MFM drives on a 5170 was
"SpeedStor" (SSTOR.EXE). It took a long time, but it was thorough and
versatile.
http://vetusware.com/download/SpeedStor%206.5/?id=9884
For testing already formatted drives, and periodic retesting, Steve
Gibson's "SPINRITE" was best.
https://www.grc.com/cs/prepurch.htm (not FREE, and there has never
been a FREE version https://www.grc.com/sr/faq.htm )
BUT, some versions had a "feature" that wass on by defayult, and you had
to turn off. Some versions of it, would test a block marked "BAD", and if
it passed, would return it to service. That might sound OK, but it didn't
know or care which ones were on the manufacturer's "BAD BLOCK" list. If
the manufacturer of a drive says, "This block is defective, do not use it
or trust it", then I do NOT want some program to say, "Well, it seemed to
work when we tried it, so we know more about it than the manufacturer."
Eventually, he got enough feedback about THAT, and later versions
defaulted to NOT do that.
There were several additional programs, that were sometimes needed, such
as if you wanted to have a partition larger than 32MB on DOS 3.30 or
earlier (MS-DOS 3.31 was first to accept larger partitions).
And, you needed an overlay, such as ONTRACK, to use a drive larger than
504MB.
Also, if you had a drive whose geometry was too incompatible with your
computer - not all CMOS/SETUPs had a user-defined drive parameters option.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com
