HI hope someone can help...

My Boss gave me an old 286 that he needs to get an old application from, the CMOS battery was dead when I got it so all BIOS info is gone,

it has a Wester Digital WD1003-WA2 controller with a Miniscribe 3650 attached,

I have the PC booting of the Floppy but not the HDD, I have found the drive type info of the net for the 3650 which is as follows :

Type:43 Cyl:809 HEAD:6 Sect:17 Write P-Comp:-1 Land Zone:852,

this is where I'm stuck, in the BIOS the Drive type options go from 1-47 but they are blank from 41- 47 "no Drive info only Type number", I'm pretty sure the drive is OK but have no clue as to what to do next.

It might be that types 41-47 are user configurable. Try going for type 43 and see if it allows you to type in the cyl/head/sect/pcomp/lz values.

Hi Cup,

I have tried to but the options i'm given are, left and right arrow to change option, nothing to allow me to edit,I have tried every key on the keyboard but my only option is to scroll left or right - 1 to 47 with no edit option, I thought that no: 47 was surposed to be user defined but it wont let me....

Have a look through all the hdd parameter options offered in the bios.

If the are any that match your cyls/heads/sects (809/6/17) try them, the other params are not that important.

With some early pc's a bios setup floppy was required, which provided a facility to write params that were not already in the bios.

If you really are stuck, there is always the option of moving the hdd to another pc as a slave and accessing.

Advise how you get on.

Good Luck - Keep us posted.

You may have to experiment - those tables did not necessarily follow a universal standard, and differed per manufacturer as well

I'm not one of those who think Bill Gates is the devil. I simply suspect that if Microsoft ever met up with the devil, it wouldn't need an interpreter.

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Yeah, above about drive type 24 they would vary by manufacturer. The universal types around 40 meg--17, 21 and 24--must not be the correct ones else a google search would show that. Many drives and drive cards would allow a translation, that is a different C/H/S than what the drive label shows. I didn't see any shown for that drive. In that case, when trying various types, don't use one that has cylinders greater than 809. That could damage the drive.

A 286 is kind of old to have user definable drive types. It's possible the 41-47 ones just weren't used. But keep trying to access them. Use TAB, ALT as well as the arrow keys.

Hi Guys, thanks for the advice but no joy as yet, the floppy to provide a facilty to write params to the BIOS sounds good, if anyone knows where to download one???, the BIOS is "286 Modular BIOS version 3.03 Copyrite Award Software Inc. GCH" also is it possible to get the controller/Drive working in a 486?

I've never seen a utility that adds extra drive types to a bios. Anything like that would be a bios upgrade. You'd need to go to the motherboard manufacturer for that. The use of a floppy disk to access the bios was for those systems that didn't use a series of keystrokes (DEL, etc.) to get into cmos/bios setup. But maybe Mike knows of something else.

You could use the card in another PC, preferably one that didn't have on-board controllers already. But remember, since that drive was working on the 286, it had to be one of its drive types. The 486 may have a user definable drive type but that may not help since the parameters need to be whatever they were in the 286.

Hi DAVEINCAPS,

I agree that it must have been set up and partitioned with one of the BIOS HD types.

To find out, boot on floppy and run SPINRITE.

=====================================
If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.

M2

Where would i get a copy of spinrite?

check your mail

=====================================
If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.

M2

Where would i get a copy of spinrite?

Hi this is a bit long winded but, the spinrite app hangs on the DRAM test no:321 which probably means I have a problem with the memory but since this is not my current issue it doesnt matter, it also tells me what the Drive parms should be ie. cls 809/head 6/sectors 17 but this is not available in the BIOS so the drive must have been configured using one of the options that is available, I have booted the PC using an old MSDOS boot disk and ran FDISK to show partition info:

Partition status type start end size
c: 1 A Pri- Dos 0 612 613
2 non-dos 613 807 195

does this mean that whoever initialy set this up set the sector size to 615?

I'm rusty on this.

Does spinrite not warn that the drive settings have changed? Or does it not get that far because of the mem error?

What happens when you try to boot on HD?

=====================================
If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.

M2

Yes it does, its says that the settings have changed since the drives partitons were created, it receomends that I change the BIOS parms to match the drive settings
809/6/17 but I cant select this as an option, unfortunatly spinrite cant complete its tests as it hangs on the DRAM tests, do you think I'll have to locate the faulty chip to let spinrite do its thing?
btw I meant 615 Cyls not sectors...

The drive may have had drive overlay software installed to get around the BIOS Limitations...............

........therefore as long as the drive is recognised as present be it the wrong size, then using overlay software should recognise the correct size.

If you wish will send you an executionable floppy creator of "WD EZDrive9.03 Drive Overlay Software"

Try drive type 2. If that doesn't work try type 3.

What version of dos were you booting with? Partition info ususally doesn't show the sectors but maybe your older one does.

I think I'd hold off installing overlay software.

"c: 1 A Pri- Dos 0 612 613
2 non-dos 613 807 195"

Does spinrite say what the CHS settings are now?

What version of DOS are you booting from floppy?

What happens when you try to boot on HD?

BTW, be very careful about drive overlays. If it has one and you tinker with it, there's probably no going back.

=====================================
If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.

M2

Hi Guys,

I have tried drive type 2 and 3 and every other type drive that didnt exceed the Cyls, no joy, unfortunatly spinrite does not complete all of its tests so all it tells me is what the drive pms should be, I'm booting from a dos boot disk ver 3.30, if I boot from th HD it just gives me the error non system disk or disk error, strike any key, What is this drive overlay sw all about and was it widely used back when and can i use it with a getout.

boot on the floppy and:

dir c:\

=====================================
If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.

M2

I have tried a dir on c: but all i get is a error reading the sector abort,retry,fail?

Santa, maybe we could try your "WD EZDrive9.03 Drive Overlay Software" please?

Emailed as requested......................

Unzip the file then you will have the Executionable Disk Creator .EXE File

Cheers Santa, will update on Monday afternoon, the 286 is a work thing and wont see again till monday.

Ask your boss, if he is aware if any set-up disk(s) were supplied with the pc originally.

I do not recognise the makers name and it suggests the pc was originally made by a small company. Therefore if possible identify the motherboard and then googling for any info.

It seems to me, much of the above has become too complex.

Whereas the problem is how to write hdd params (which you know) into the bios.

Good Luck - Keep us posted.

Further to my above post, googling for "western digital" +wd1003 produced:-

http://www.wdc.com/en/library/legac...

Here can be seen a reference to a System Diagnostic Disk of the type I was referring to. (Page 4 - note 3).

Good Luck - Keep us posted.

What drive type is set in BIOS?

=====================================
If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.

M2

The 'system Diagnostic Diskette' it refers to is the setup disk that allows access to the motherboard's bios cmos. (Note #4, 'set clock, etc.' is a motherboard bios setting.)

The Caution section, especially the warning 'Not all AT compatibles share the same drive tables as IBM' indicate the card is not supplying its own drive types. Besides, the card has no bios so it wouldn't have any place to hold that info. It doesn't even have the low level format function typically run through DEBUG.

Dicer is stuck with whatever drive types the motherboard bios offers. There's not any way to add to them, barring a bios upgrade.

I downloaded the setup sheet for the WD1003-WA2 at the begining which really only refers to the jumper and cable positions, the PC is an OEMtek they do not exist anymore nor is there any info on the model, the Mother board is a Suntac which I found the Setup sheet for that again only refers to the Jumpers and Cable positions not the BIOS, I've had the drive checked out and has come back as "fully fuctional but setup params needed to extract data", the most frustrating thing about this is that all it will take to the drive working is to set the right params, I have tried all setings that do not exceed the Cyls and none work but if I try some off the options that do exceed I could damage the drive, the drive in the BIOS is curently set to type 3 which is 615/7/17, should I just try all of the types available in the Bios, WIL THIS PERMANATLY DAMAGE THE DRIVE?

What are the params for types 40 & 44?

=====================================
If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.

M2

When you said you did the dir c:\ that M2 suggested in #19, did you do it for each type? I mentioned trying type 2 because of the cylinder info you posted in #12. That was such a commonly used one I thought it may have been set up that way originally for convenience.

You should probably do the dir c:\ for each drive type that doesn't exceed 615 cylinder. If you don't get a directory listing then do it for each type that doesn't exceed 809 cylinders. If that doesn't help you may as well do it for the remaining types as that would seem to be your only option. I can't say for sure if it'll damage the drive or not.

Hi DAVEINCAPS,

This article:

http://www.redhill.net.au/d/d-a.html

says type 40/44. My guess is it was set up to full capacity and prtitioned to 32MB with DOS 3.30 [the max]

Doing the math, 615*6*17=62730; close enough if one sector is 512.

=====================================
If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.

M2

Yeah, it may depend on what dos version was originally used to partition the drive. I think 30 meg is the highest 3.3 can work with. Of course it could also be the drive is just bad, either from sitting around all this time or from the attempts to get it going.

Dicer - I would advise against using any params that are not those for the hdd concerned, particularly cylinders. Possibly damage may occur, who knows.
At the end of the day unless the params are correct, the pc will not be able to read the info on the hdd that is required.

Once the pc 'sees' the hdd, any partition(s) will become apparent.

DaveinCaps - as advised previously some early pc's had a setup disc, The controller notes refer to it, but are not 100% specific.
One of the set up functions was to add hdd params to those already in the bios. At that time there were so many hdd's coming out with different params and interfaces (rll/mfm etc.) that it became impossible to include all in the bios.

The first pc's had this table in the bios and a way had to be found to add to the table (rather than select from it) if the facilty was not included in the boot setup.

Good Luck - Keep us posted.

Yeah, there were eventually user-definable types but unless the bios already had that capability I don't think it could be added with just a setup disk. It's been a long time since I've messed with anything that old but I can remember being upset when I couldn't get a good 'fit' for drives in systems that didn't have definable types.

I have tried every drive type in the BIOS at this stage and none of them work, type 34, 35 and 36 give a data error all the rest give an error reading the sector, so I guess this means the drive has had it then..... thanks for all your help, this was my first time using a forum and i have been very suprised by the level of help, so thanks to everone, pity it wasnt a better outcome tho!

After each setiing of drive type, did you do a cold boot on floppy? Or did you try the HD?

=====================================
If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.

M2

It's not lost yet.

You can skype me.

=====================================
If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.

M2

I'm not familiar with the spinrite you previously ran but SYSINFO found in old norton utilities would provide some partitioning info. I could email it if you want to try it.

Daveincaps i'd try anything at this stage, so please send on the SYSINFO if you dont mind, got the drive/controller working in a 486 but still unable to access the drive...

OK, I sent it. Post back results.

Here is the deal with that old stuff. If the original specs were not used to select the drive geometry then one could have used almost any user combination. There is not auto select on that old of a system. This all assumes that the drive is possible to be used. Many of the old drives needed a program called park to land the heads back to a safe zone prior to moving.

If you boss wants that data he might be better off using a drive recovery service that removes the plattens and reads every bit off and tries to re-construct.

I'd wonder what on earth could be used from that long ago that doesn't have a newer app.

There used to be an old Norton app that would try to seek out the formatting I think. If I had it still I doubt it would still be on good media.

You need to see if that is rll or mfm too being that old.

I read it wrong and answer it wrong too. So get off my case you goober.

Dicer - was the setup disc I emailed any use?

Good Luck - Keep us posted.

Sorry guy's I have spent too much time on this so we are going to send the drive away to get the data off.

thanks for all your efforts.

J.

Let us know how it turns out.