How to tell if a SCSI HDD is 256 byte sectors

[SpicyChronos]

Hi all.

 

Okay, here's the scoop.

 

I would like to try and get another HDD hooked up to my Supra/KPI interface, since my poor Xebec drive died. But I have a few old SCSI HDD's laying around, and would like to know how to tell if the drive supports 256Byte sectors. *i'm guessing that's what I need for this interface* I know I won't be able to use the full size, but I think the EPROM has it set to a 10Meg drive, with 1 720K fake floppy and two equal size 5 meg partiitons. I'm just wanting to make sure that it wasn't a futile attempt.

 

Thanks all.

 

-Spicy

[+Larry]

Hi all.

 

Okay, here's the scoop.

 

I would like to try and get another HDD hooked up to my Supra/KPI interface, since my poor Xebec drive died. But I have a few old SCSI HDD's laying around, and would like to know how to tell if the drive supports 256Byte sectors. *i'm guessing that's what I need for this interface* I know I won't be able to use the full size, but I think the EPROM has it set to a 10Meg drive, with 1 720K fake floppy and two equal size 5 meg partiitons. I'm just wanting to make sure that it wasn't a futile attempt.

 

Thanks all.

 

-Spicy

 

You are probably going to need the mfg's. data sheets to determine that. You mention "SCSI HDD's" -- I read that the Supra interface had booting problems with real SCSI drives (as opposed to an MFM drive using a bridge board). But perhaps that got fixed along the way. What kind of a bridge board did your XEBEC (SASI?) drive use?

-Larry

[SpicyChronos]

Hi all.

 

Okay, here's the scoop.

 

I would like to try and get another HDD hooked up to my Supra/KPI interface, since my poor Xebec drive died. But I have a few old SCSI HDD's laying around, and would like to know how to tell if the drive supports 256Byte sectors. *i'm guessing that's what I need for this interface* I know I won't be able to use the full size, but I think the EPROM has it set to a 10Meg drive, with 1 720K fake floppy and two equal size 5 meg partiitons. I'm just wanting to make sure that it wasn't a futile attempt.

 

Thanks all.

 

-Spicy

 

You are probably going to need the mfg's. data sheets to determine that. You mention "SCSI HDD's" -- I read that the Supra interface had booting problems with real SCSI drives (as opposed to an MFM drive using a bridge board). But perhaps that got fixed along the way. What kind of a bridge board did your XEBEC (SASI?) drive use?

-Larry

 

Hi Larry,

 

It was a Xebec Owl 4000 drive I think, from the documentation I got from LLPWhite. It was just a drive. It had it's own controller on the board. it was an 50 connection edge connector straight to the KP interface.

 

Here's what I tried... I have a 213MB Maxtor LXT213SY SCSI drive. I dumped the EPROM from DanWinslow's interface, and with the documentation I figured out what bits to change to add the correct Cylinders and Heads. As well as changing the partiton sizes. Well I tried that and with the formatting utility that comes with the docs, it errors out with some error codes.

 

That's the smallest SCSI drive I have. all the rest are 2.1GB and 4.1GB.. too big for this project..

 

The Problem I'm having with the XEBEC drive is that the RW heads might be out of alignment (my fault) and I have no clue on how to re-align them.

 

-Spicy

[re-atari]

 

The Problem I'm having with the XEBEC drive is that the RW heads might be out of alignment (my fault) and I have no clue on how to re-align them.

 

I think a lowlevel format can take care of the misalignment. The controller will have to provide such a routine in its firmware, of course. LLF'ing basically writes new blank tracks.

Do you mean by misaligning, that you shifted or removed the track-00 sensor?

 

re-atari

[SpicyChronos]

 

The Problem I'm having with the XEBEC drive is that the RW heads might be out of alignment (my fault) and I have no clue on how to re-align them.

 

I think a lowlevel format can take care of the misalignment. The controller will have to provide such a routine in its firmware, of course. LLF'ing basically writes new blank tracks.

Do you mean by misaligning, that you shifted or removed the track-00 sensor?

 

re-atari

 

Well in my troubleshoting, etc of the drive, I opened the case and tried moving the rw heads a few times to see if it might have seized up. well the movement works fine if I remove the metal stopper that stops the head at track 0. otherwise it makes a horrible clicking sount, as it's trying to get to track 0.

[re-atari]

Well in my troubleshoting, etc of the drive, I opened the case and tried moving the rw heads a few times to see if it might have seized up. well the movement works fine if I remove the metal stopper that stops the head at track 0. otherwise it makes a horrible clicking sount, as it's trying to get to track 0.

The top of platter 0 doesn't seem to have visible damage, but that may well lurk on one of the other sides. When bad sectors develop, the drive should try to read them a number of times before giving up in vain. If track 0 is bad, you're screwed. Does the drive find track 0 if you remove the stopper alltogether?

BTW: make sure to close the lid if it doesn't need to be open, as even the tiniest of dust particles can cause a headcrash. When that happens, you're really, really screwed.

 

Now you could try the following trick as a last resort, if you're prepared to wipe out any data stored on the drive. Put in the stopper in the position you think it originally was and lowlevel format (built in the controller's firmware or available as a separate program?) the drive. This will rewrite all tracks including track 0. If it detects a bad sector on track 0 when verifying the sectors, screw the stopper in a few turns and lowlevel format again. Repeat this procedure until track 0 verifies OK. Now lock the stopper with glue.

What this routine does, is shift the physical position of the cylinders a bit to the inside of the platters. Usually there is some room available for this. I recall owning a Maxtor XT-1140 MFM drive once, which had a spare of more than 100 cylinders. That's more than 10%, originally it was listed as having 918 cylinders, but the completely identical RLL model (XT-2190) was sold as having 1024. Formatting the XT-1140 with 1024 cylinders worked flawless, and later on I used it on a WD1006 RLL controller for years without any problem whatsoever.

 

As a sidestep in history, and an amusing story in its own right, I remember that back in the days over time Tandon TM-262 drives developed a similar defect as your drive is having. They didn't have a feature that parked the heads in a safe zone when powering down. Usually they parked in track 0, which was particularly nasty, as your partition table, sector table, directory entries and boot sector were all stored there. Once it had a bad sector there was nothing you could do about it. A friend of mine had found a way to revive such a drive, though. By reverse engineering he had found out he could inverse the position where the drive stores track 0. Originally this is the most outer cylinder, but by putting in modified PAL on the drives' electronics he could make the drive store track 0 on the most inner cylinder. After this hack these drives were good for another 2 years or so of use. Ah yes, the good ol' days, don't you just love 'em...

 

re-atari

Edited April 17, 2007 by re-atari

[SpicyChronos]

Well in my troubleshoting, etc of the drive, I opened the case and tried moving the rw heads a few times to see if it might have seized up. well the movement works fine if I remove the metal stopper that stops the head at track 0. otherwise it makes a horrible clicking sount, as it's trying to get to track 0.

The top of platter 0 doesn't seem to have visible damage, but that may well lurk on one of the other sides. When bad sectors develop, the drive should try to read them a number of times before giving up in vain. If track 0 is bad, you're screwed. Does the drive find track 0 if you remove the stopper alltogether?

BTW: make sure to close the lid if it doesn't need to be open, as even the tiniest of dust particles can cause a headcrash. When that happens, you're really, really screwed.

 

Now you could try the following trick as a last resort, if you're prepared to wipe out any data stored on the drive. Put in the stopper in the position you think it originally was and lowlevel format (built in the controller's firmware or available as a separate program?) the drive. This will rewrite all tracks including track 0. If it detects a bad sector on track 0 when verifying the sectors, screw the stopper in a few turns and lowlevel format again. Repeat this procedure until track 0 verifies OK. Now lock the stopper with glue.

What this routine does, is shift the physical position of the cylinders a bit to the inside of the platters. Usually there is some room available for this. I recall owning a Maxtor XT-1140 MFM drive once, which had a spare of more than 100 cylinders. That's more than 10%, originally it was listed as having 918 cylinders, but the completely identical RLL model (XT-2190) was sold as having 1024. Formatting the XT-1140 with 1024 cylinders worked flawless, and later on I used it on a WD1006 RLL controller for years without any problem whatsoever.

 

As a sidestep in history, and an amusing story in its own right, I remember that back in the days over time Tandon TM-262 drives developed a similar defect as your drive is having. They didn't have a feature that parked the heads in a safe zone when powering down. Usually they parked in track 0, which was particularly nasty, as your partition table, sector table, directory entries and boot sector were all stored there. Once it had a bad sector there was nothing you could do about it. A friend of mine had found a way to revive such a drive, though. By reverse engineering he had found out he could inverse the position where the drive stores track 0. Originally this is the most outer cylinder, but by putting in modified PAL on the drives' electronics he could make the drive store track 0 on the most inner cylinder. After this hack these drives were good for another 2 years or so of use. Ah yes, the good ol' days, don't you just love 'em...

 

re-atari

 

Very cool information.

 

But what I need is some type of software to try to read sector 0, since this is where the partition table is located with the Supra/KP interface. I really would like to get the data off the drive, as there are programs on there that I don't have backups of from the originals (ie. Daisy Dot III, and some others) The software that I have for the interface is very simple, and no re-tries built in, etc.

 

What I need is something that will read the sectors constantly, so I can see if I can get to sector 0. Like you said, read, adjust screw, read again, etc... If I knew what commands to use, I possibly could write something.. it'd be crude as I don't know assembly, m65, etc.. but I guess I could try BASIC. *shrug*

[re-atari]

Very cool information.

 

But what I need is some type of software to try to read sector 0, since this is where the partition table is located with the Supra/KP interface. I really would like to get the data off the drive, as there are programs on there that I don't have backups of from the originals (ie. Daisy Dot III, and some others) The software that I have for the interface is very simple, and no re-tries built in, etc.

 

What I need is something that will read the sectors constantly, so I can see if I can get to sector 0. Like you said, read, adjust screw, read again, etc... If I knew what commands to use, I possibly could write something.. it'd be crude as I don't know assembly, m65, etc.. but I guess I could try BASIC. *shrug*

In that case I'm afraid it's over my head. IIRC there are people in this forum who use a Black Box SCSI controller, they might be able to help you out which commands to use. Sorry I can't be more helpfull, I sympathize with your problem.

 

re-atari

[Mathy]

Hello SpicyChronos

 

Your best bet would be to contact Video61 and ask them for help.

 

Problem is, you have to know, how to access the SCSI port on the Supra/KPI Interface directly.

 

Bob Puff of CSS put the source code to two pieces of software that directly access the SCSI port on the BlackBox on his site. From this, Matthias Belitz was able to write an ASPI manager (read: SCSI driver) for the BlackBox. By altering my CD/DVD reader utility a little bit, I was able to read sectors from my harddrive. The BlackBox also has it's configuration stored in sector one. The partitiontable(s) of the BlackBox can be all over the harddrive. I read them too.

 

What I want to say with all this is that it's possible to do whatever you want to do with a harddrive, as long as you know how to access the SCSI port directly.

 

BTW I only do TurboBASIC. And my system isn't running yet.

 

Greetings

 

Mathy