486 problem

Hi Graham..

The emphasis on "low level" format... we haven't done that since back around the time sunshine was invented.

Thank goodness :)

Take care.

Ken

A guy called Steve Gibson wrote it in the '80s. He's online these days: If you actually need one of the older versions that worked on MFM & RLL controllers, it'd probably be worth dropping him a line.

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   W  "Some people are alive only because it is illegal to kill them."
 . | ,. w ,      
  \|/  \|/              Perna condita delenda est
---^----^---------------------------------------------------------------

Ain't that the truth. ;^)

--
   W  "Some people are alive only because it is illegal to kill them."
 . | ,. w ,      
  \|/  \|/              Perna condita delenda est
---^----^---------------------------------------------------------------

Yep. Also the WD1006 (WD = Western Digital).

Interleaving? The big goal back then for performance was to build your system fast enough to cope with 1:1 interleaving on the hard disk, which gave you the maximum R/W throughput. (This is totally unneccessary now.)

--
   W  "Some people are alive only because it is illegal to kill them."
 . | ,. w ,      
  \|/  \|/              Perna condita delenda est
---^----^---------------------------------------------------------------

yes .. The Ref was the killer site ... back in the mid 90's

SpinRite by Bob Gibson ... a google search will find his site ... any old version will work probably ... it runs long and slow and removes some data, checks the drive surface, and refreshes the low level format, then replaces the data .... if a sector of the drive is unusable it marks it bad ... a grown defect it is ... and i believe it "disappears" it just like the factory defects are disappeared

i bet you can f>

I have the printed text file instructions for a WD1003-WA2 Controller if that's useful. A 486 with an old MFM or RLL drive in it? Not really common unless it was an upgrade from an older system. The drive does have 2 separate cables on it right? If you post the drive model I may have the specs on it. Your original post doesn't show up in my news reader.

I remember the low level format command used debug on the DOS boot disk to start up a drive from scratch. You ran debug then entered G=C800:5 and the controller's ROM would start a low level format routine. I also have Spinrite kicking around here somewhere. We used that to "square up" drives that had been used for while, and were having data issues.

I grew up on that old technology....

- Tim -

I found a Simtel mirror at

but I can't remember which directory tree TheRef was in. Don't know how recent their copy will be. Simtel itself doesn't give results for a search on "theref".

--
"This, then, is the essence of Gore's complaint:
there are too many humans and they are too well off."
 -- Robert Tracinski

Try this site if its not too late