Name that disk!!!

[Art Neilson]

In article <1990Jun11.010304.19696 at cbnews.att.com> gwe at cbnews.att.com (George W. Erhart) writes:
>
>HELP HELP HELP
>
>I have 2 ESDI CDC disk drives Part #94166-182. From the ads in Computer Shopper,
>it appears that this is a 182 MB drive, unformatted. However, I have no
>data sheets for this drive. The folks selling the things (Computer Shopper)
>did not want to answer any questions without selling something ... so
>
>	Can someone tell me the Cylinders, Sectors, Landing Zone, PreComp, etc
>	for this drive so I can format the darn things?
>
>-- 
>George Erhart
>AT&T Bell Laboratories
>att!archie!gwe

ESDI drives use drive type 1, use your setup utility to set the type.
Many PC systems have the setup program in ROM, hitting F2 during POST
will give you the setup menu.  Your controller will get the drive
geometery from the disk, it should already have been low-level formatted
at the factory. Usually 2 cylinders are reserved for defect management,
1 cylinder contains a backup of the other for safety. These frequently
are the last 2 cylinders in the disk.  Boot DOS on your system after
setting the drive type to 1 and run debug.  At the debug - prompt enter
the command g=c800:5 this will execute the code at memory address c800:0005,
this usually is the location of the hard disk controller's low-level
format routine in ROM.  The format routine will probably inform you
regarding your disk geometery, give you the oppurtunity to modify your
defect list, let you low-level format the drive and let you enable any sector
translation modes if so desired.  Unix can usually handle the sectoring
native to the drive. After this is done you can go ahead and install
any OS or whatevers on the disk.
-- 
Arthur W. Neilson III		| ARPA: art at pegasus.com
Bank of Hawaii Tech Support	| UUCP: uunet!ucsd!nosc!pegasus!art