[cctalk] Formatting and using RQDX3's and 2190's.

[Chris Zach via cctalk]

Decided to spend some time working on my 11/73 with MFM drives. 
Currently it has one of my RQDX3 boards (I have 3, 1 in attic), a 40mb 
ST412 drive (the half height Seagate whatever) which works fine. No 
issues there.

I'm trying to format an RD54 compatible drive and am running into major 
issues. First, my two RWDX3's have different ROM dates, the old one is 
1986 and the new one is 1990. This is important because I can't boot 
RX33 disk images with my GoTek using the old card but I can using the 
new one.

Question: I'm guessing the old ROMs only supported RX50 disks? Or is it 
a secret jumper setting.

Anyway I do have both RX33 and RX50 versions of XXDP so not a big issue. 
On to formatting.

The old controller (which I used for the 40mb Seagate) had pins 2-3 
jumpered on W23. With that the RD54 was able to autoformat but then 
would crash xxdp as soon as the initial format was done. Odd. So I used 
the new controller with 1-2 and 3-4 jumpered. Same problem. Then I tried 
having 1-2 jumpered and did a manual format (not autoformat, select 
RD54, etc)

I noticed that on the old board it would ask me for the date when doing 
this kind of format, on the new board it would just ask me for the 
serial number. Odd.

Question: Is the ZRQCH0.BIN file calling different routines in the RQDX3 
ROM?

Anyway after this the drive would format but then do endless seek errors 
on the "read" portion of the disk check. Two drives did this, so it's 
probably not the drives. Odd. Putting the drives on the Dave Gesswin MFM 
reader showed all cylinders could be read.

Question: Can Dave G's board be used to low level format an RD54? Can it 
test physical disk for errors (wasn't sure)

Now the drives only format for a minute or two before throwing errors. 
Looks like something is very confused on XXDP. Not going to try any 
other disks until I figure this out.

Thoughts? Different sites say different things about the RQDX3 jumpers, 
some say to jumper 2-3 to allow more than 7 heads, some say to jumper 
pins 1-2 and some say jumper pins 1-2 on "early ROM" and 1-2 3-4 on 
"later ROM".

This is a serious pain, but just what settings should be done to allow 
low level formatting, and did my previous attempts to low level wedge 
these disks from the RQDX3 point of view? Can I do a low level wipe with 
Dave Gesswin's board/software?

Thanks!
Chris