doctor_shred Posted April 7, 2022 Share Posted April 7, 2022 Hi I picked up an old Syquest 88 MB C external SCSI drive recently but I can't get it running on my 4 MB STE. The drive and cartridges are clean and appear in good order. The drive spins up and is recognised by HD Driver as a Syquest SQ555. When I try to format the cartridges, however, HD Driver tells me the disc is write protected and cannot format the drive. I've tried the write protect tab on the cartridges in both positions and I get the same error. Does anyone know what the issue is? Maybe the drive is faulty? Any thoughts or help would be appreciated. It's connected to the STE with an ICD Link. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TGB1718 Posted April 7, 2022 Share Posted April 7, 2022 (edited) What HD Driver are you using, I have a SQ 10Mb drive and use ICD Pro, as long as you get the drive geometry right it should work. As you suggest maybe the drive is faulty not reading the write protect tab. Just a thought, there might even be a jumper that write protects the drive. Edit: Just a second thought, have you selected the terminators too 58082-001revC_SQ555_OEM_Ref_Jun90.pdf Edited April 7, 2022 by TGB1718 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctor_shred Posted April 7, 2022 Author Share Posted April 7, 2022 Thanks for the advice and manual link @TGB1718 I'm using Uwe Seimet's HD Driver v8.31. I've made some progress. I formatted a 44MB cartidge in Windows and can partition it in HD Driver as TOS and Windows compatible. I can now use it on my STE so the Syquest drive and cartridge seem to work. I still can't format it on the Atari though. Very strange. It will now read and write but not format!? I'm annoyed I need to use a modern PC to get my 90s tech working ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TGB1718 Posted April 7, 2022 Share Posted April 7, 2022 Might be worth booting ICD Pro from a floppy and see if the ICD software can format it, you should be able to get the disk geometry from that manual. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SoulBuster Posted April 7, 2022 Share Posted April 7, 2022 I have a syquest 200, syquest 88 and a syquest 44. I have not been able to format a 44 disk on either the 88 or 200 drives and have not been able to format an 88 on the 200 drive using HD Drver. Since you were able to format the 44 disk on the 88 drive in windows, I have to assume HDDriver is at fault. I have HDDriver 11.x. I have not tried to format smaller disks since I got it. I will give it a shot and report back Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SoulBuster Posted April 7, 2022 Share Posted April 7, 2022 I still was not able to format a 44 in an 88 drive. Get some 88 media and you should be fine. You can still partition 44 media in an 88. The only thing you cannot do is format a 44 in an 88 drive. So partition it and do Test sectors, and that will work just fine. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctor_shred Posted April 9, 2022 Author Share Posted April 9, 2022 On 4/8/2022 at 12:57 AM, SoulBuster said: I still was not able to format a 44 in an 88 drive. Get some 88 media and you should be fine. You can still partition 44 media in an 88. The only thing you cannot do is format a 44 in an 88 drive. So partition it and do Test sectors, and that will work just fine. Ah, so it's likely an issue specific to the 44mb cartridges. Typical as I have a stack of 5 of them that came with the drive but no 88mb ones. Thanks for the help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SoulBuster Posted April 9, 2022 Share Posted April 9, 2022 No, not just the 44s. 88s have that same problem when used on a 200 Drive (This is why I have one of each drive so I can format them, then use in any drive). And this might only be a problem with HD Driver. I have not tested any other driver. I have read, but not put to the test, that you can just partition it and use without formatting. I would do the "Test Sectors" thing after partitioning though. If you really need to format them, you mentioned that you formatted one in windows. You can format them all in windows and partition them on the Atari. Then they are Atari Disks not FAT disks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TGB1718 Posted April 9, 2022 Share Posted April 9, 2022 I know for certain that ICD Pro will format and partition older 10M disks, I did it bac in the 90's before I had a PC to do it for me, so it's probably going to work with the larger drives SQ drives and carts Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SoulBuster Posted April 9, 2022 Share Posted April 9, 2022 3 hours ago, TGB1718 said: I know for certain that ICD Pro will format and partition older 10M disks, I did it bac in the 90's before I had a PC to do it for me, so it's probably going to work with the larger drives SQ drives and carts The original poster was having trouble with a 44 disk in an 88 drive using HDDriver. HD driver does not have a problem formatting a 44 disk in a 44 drive, no problem with an 88 disk in an 88 drive nor a problem with a 200 disk in a 200 drive. HD Driver seems to have a problem formatting a 44 disk or an 88 disk in a 200 drive and also a problem formatting an 44 disk in an 88 drive. I am sure, that the ICD driver can format the disk in the same size drive. The test for the ICD driver is trying to format a smaller disk in a larger drive. Windows seems to do this just fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TGB1718 Posted April 9, 2022 Share Posted April 9, 2022 1 hour ago, SoulBuster said: HD Driver seems to have a problem formatting a 44 disk or an 88 disk in a 200 drive and also a problem formatting an 44 disk in an 88 drive. I don't use HDDriver, so have no idea what it asks to format a drive, if it assumes the disk based on the drive type attached then it would likely fail to format a disk if it's not what expected. ICD driver asks for the disk geometry or you can select from a known list of drives, so if you put the geometry of the disk (not the expected for the drive) then I would think it would format ok. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SoulBuster Posted April 9, 2022 Share Posted April 9, 2022 HD Driver detects the geometry, reads, writes, partitions and tests to that geometry. It does fail at a smaller geometry than the drive size only when formatting. I posted previously that I think that HD Driver is at fault. The test was suggested to see if the ICD software has the same problem on these drives. It has been demonstrated that windows does not have this problem. I guess Peter's software should also be compared also. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctor_shred Posted April 14, 2022 Author Share Posted April 14, 2022 I've never used the ICD software. It would be interesting to see if I have more luck with that although, as I have a workaround with windows for now that something for another day. Many thanks for the help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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