                                 Disk Tips:

                          Preparing IDE/ATA Drives
                                for use with
                        NetWare 2.1x, and NetWare 2.2

                          Stan Simmons [75600,3240]
                   Business Forms Estimating Systems, Inc.
                               Sept. 14, 1991

The IDE286.ZIP file from DL 16 (New Novell Uploads) or DL 8 (Novell
Patch/Driver) on NOVA contains a NetWare 2.x disk driver which makes it
possible to use IDE/ATA type disk drives with file servers using the
IDE/ATA interface. The new IDE disk driver is very similar to the old
Netware ISA disk driver. The major difference is that the IDE disk driver
does not get the drive description from a table. It gets the drive
descriptions directly from the disk drives at initialization time.

IDE/ATA drives are similar to SCSI drives in the logical layout of the disk
and it parameters, so they can mimic the storage of any drive type that
isn't above the number of physical formatted bytes on the drive.

Do not format IDE/ATA drives with anything that will do a low-level format.
On most IDE/ATA drives a low-level format will do nothing, but some are
less protective than others. You can destroy some IDE/ATA drives by
formatting them. Low-end Seagate drive are particularly susceptible.

The IDE/ATA drive can be either a master or a slave drive. The master
designation is for either the only drive, or the first of two IDE/ATA
drives. The slave designation is only for the second of two drives. The
master drive acts as the controller, and passes commands onto the slave for
its operation. The master also performs diagnostics for both of the drives.

For those of you that use mirroring under SFT, you will see a problem here. 
If a mirrored pair crashes, the first thing the OS does (after retrying) is
to reset the controller. This initiates the diagnostics if the master is
still running (if not, the OS will timeout and crash, since the slave can't
do anything without the master) or if the master is ok, the master will
timeout looking for the slave and the OS will crash.

At this time Duplexing has not been tested. I have been unable to find a
IDE/ATA controller that allows the use of an alternate IRQ line.

Some controllers may give a stack overflow error when run on fast '386
computers. The only cure that I have found is to use a different
controller. The inexpensive "paddle" controllers seem to work very well.

DO NOT run Non-Dedicated on an IBM Model 35 or 40 machine.

     1)   Install the drive(s) and controller into your computer.

     2)   If you are running two IDE/ATA drives you will need to refer to
          the drive manual to set one drive to Master and one to Slave.

     3)   Run your setup program and set the drive type(s) to 1.

     4)   Turn the power to your computer off, then back on.

                      NetWare 286 2.1x Advanced and SFT

Do NOT format the hard drives with COMPSURF as this will wipe out the
embedded bad track info.

     1)   From DL 8 (Novell Patch/Driver) on NOVA in NETWIRE get the file
          LOADER.ZIP. From DL 16 (New Novell Uploads) or DL 8 (Novell
          Patch/Driver) on NOVA get the file IDE286.ZIP.

     2)   Unzip these files and copy the included drivers (LOADER.DAT,
          INSTOVL.OBJ, IDE.DSK and IDE.OBJ) onto the appropriate working
          copies of the NetGen diskettes.

     3)   Run NETGEN and select the IDE Disk driver. Continue the
          generation as normal.

     4)   When presented with the NetWare Installation option on the NetGen
          menu (on the machine to be set up as the file server, after the
          NetWare Operating System file and Utilities Files are generated,
          Linked and configured) select the DEFAULT INSTALLATION option.

     5)   Create and Save the PARTITION TABLE. This will create a Non-DOS
          compatible partition which will not be limited to the original AT
          BIOS/DOS Compatible Partition limitation of 1024 cylinders. Exit
          back to the NETGEN Menu.

     6)   Select NetWare Installation and choose the CUSTOM INSTALLATION
          option. From here you can modify the VOLUME information as much
          as you need/desire, but do NOT choose the PARTITION TABLE option
          or you will flag the partition as DOS Compatible and you may have
          cylinder wrap problems.

          ** DO NOT EVEN LOOK AT THE PARTITION INFORMATION! **

     7)   Save the volume information you need, then select the option to
          load the OS and System and Public files.

     8)   Continue the Installation procedure and load all the disk files.


                                 NetWare 2.2

Do NOT format the hard drives with COMPSURF as this will wipe out the
embedded bad track info.

     1)   From DL 16 (New Novell Uploads) or DL 8 (Novell Patch/Driver) on
          NOVA get the file IDE286.ZIP.

     2)   Unzip these files and copy the included drivers (IDE.DSK and
          IDE.OBJ) onto the working copies of the Install diskettes.

     3)   Run INSTALL in the Advanced mode.

     4)   Select the IDE Disk driver.

     5)   Continue the generation as normal.

     6)   You may ignore the "Warning! Bad Block Table not accessed" message.
          This is just a poorly worded informational message. The Bad Block
          Table is read when the network operating system is loaded.
