========================================================================= (C) 1994 by Atari Corporation, GEnie, and the Atari Roundtables. May be reprinted only with this notice intact. The Atari Roundtables on GEnie are *official* information services of Atari Corporation. To sign up for GEnie service, call (with modem) 800-638-8369. Upon connection type HHH (RETURN after that). Wait for the U#= prompt.Type XTX99437,GENIE and press [RETURN]. The system will prompt you for your information. ========================================================================== ************ Topic 39 Thu May 26, 1988 K.WHITHAM (Forwarded) Sub: HARD DRIVES General discussion and advice/comments etc on the care and feeding of your Hard Drive 204 message(s) total. ************ ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 1 Sun Nov 21, 1993 T.THEDELL [todo 2] at 03:11 EST I have an 85M Toadfile that I have had for about 2 years and it seems to be getting slower. Is there a utility that will cleanup the drive to make it faster [& cleaner]? ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 2 Sun Nov 21, 1993 J.MEEHAN3 [>> Joe M << ] at 08:31 EST Message 195, Sun Nov 21, 1993 T.THEDELL [todo 2] > ... it seems to be getting slower. Is there a utility that < > will cleanup the drive to make it faster [& cleaner]? < Diamond Edge! See Category 33 topic 3. >> Joe M << ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 3 Sun Nov 21, 1993 DF.WATSON [Dennis] at 14:57 EST Bud, Thanks for the info on the ST-251. I gave up on putting it into the PC, so I put it in my SH205 case a while ago and I used Bob's WINCAP file and it formatted out to about 50 megs. The PC controller card wouldn't accept a different size drive. Darn it. So I will use it on my Atari. Dennis ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 4 Sun Nov 21, 1993 T.MCCOMB [=Tom=] at 20:35 EST Diamond Edge. Get it! -Tom McComb {12:27 pm} Sunday, November 21, 1993 ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 5 Mon Nov 22, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 03:24 EST Dennis, Wwe all know Bob - he's the guy with the pipe in our Ataris. Does he have Wincaps, too? :) Al ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 6 Sat Nov 27, 1993 R.BOARDMAN [Robert Board] at 15:17 EST I posted this message before somewhere in the ST section, but can't remember where, and I haven't seen any replies so I'm going to try again. I have a MeagST4 with a Megafile20. I recently purchased a Seagate ST225 hard drive - a perfect match to the one in the Megafile. I bought it initially because I thought I needed to replace the one in my Megafile. It seems the problem I was having is not the drive itself. Now I have this extra drive I would like to add it to my ST system. 1) Is my present power supply adequate for 2 hard drives? 2) Are there any special cabling requirements, or do I just make up 2 cables with 2 - 34 pin and 20 pin connectors and plug both in? 3) The guy I bought the newer ST225 from pointed out what looks like a terminating resistor on the drive, much like a SCSI drive has. Do I have to do anything with them (the one in the Megafile has one as well)? Which one do I change? 4) What about the jumpers between the 34 pin and 20 pin connectors? What are they for? Do I need to do something with them? ST225 drives were fairly common in XT machines for a few years. It would seem to be an inexpensive way to add an extra 20Meg of storage to an ST, but only if it works of course. Robert in Toronto ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 7 Sat Nov 27, 1993 J.TREVETHAN [John] at 19:23 EST Robert, I'll send you email on how to connect 2 drives to one controller. I did this with a Megafile 30. I added a 40meg 3.5" drive and was even able to fit it in the Megafile case. Now I have 70megs and no problems. John T. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 8 Sun Nov 28, 1993 B.SEMAAN [BOSEM] at 09:58 EST Robert, In response to your queries - 1) Probably not, the ST225 uses a healthy amount of power, especially upon spin-up. I can't find my OEM manual for the 225, but it seems like I remember the drive using 2 to 3 times the current of modern 3.5" SCSI drives (which also include embedded controllers). That's why some people have been able to run 2 drives off the old supply - at least one drive is a new 3.5" low power unit. My guess is you will need a power supply with a higher current rating at both 12 and 5 volts. Great deals can be found at electronic parts houses dealing in surplus parts. Your first task is to find out the spin-up current at both 5 and 12 volts for the ST225 so you can calculate the power required for 2 drives. Don't make the mistake of getting a supply just because its rated double the watts of what you already have. You have 2 different voltages to deal with and a supply could have a seemingly adequate total power rating and still be inadequate at one voltage or the other. Check the current of the individual output voltages instead. Also, remember to get a supply with a workable form factor if you want it to fit in your existing case. An alternative to a bigger power supply is to rig a switch on the second drive to allow you to turn on the 2 drives sequentially rather than at the same time. Considering that the power requirement at spin-up is usually more than twice that required for normal operation, you should be able to get by doing this for a while. I know I used this method successfully for a few months until I got a bigger case and supply. 2) The larger cable connects to both drives daisy-chain style. You can even crimp a second connecter to the existing one if it is long enough. Otherwise, get a standard dual 34-pin Hard drive control cable. You will also need a second data cable. That is the smaller 20-pin cable. This one is not daisy- chained. So you will have 2 separate data cables and 1 common control cable. Do not use a 'twist' cable like the floppy drives do. All pins are wired 1-1. 3) The drive attached to the middle connector of the control cable needs the resistor pack removed (if I remember correctly). You won't ruin anything by mixing this one up. The drives just won't work properly until the right one is terminated. 4)The jumpers configure drive #, test mode, daisy chain or ring connection, and parity. I cannot remember which is which, though. I would strongly recommend you call Seagate and order the OEM manual for the ST225. It is free and fully explains all the issues you are asking about. I wish I could be more help but as I mentioned, I've misplaced my 225 manual. -Bob ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 10 Sun Nov 28, 1993 DF.WATSON [Dennis] at 18:31 EST John, Hum, Can I get you to send me E-Mail on how to put my ST251 and a ST-225 in my SH205 megafile? Dennis ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 11 Wed Dec 01, 1993 T.THEDELL [todo 2] at 00:50 EST > Diamond Edge! Thanks, Joe. I'll look into it.... ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 12 Sat Dec 04, 1993 P.WALDING [Phil Walding] at 12:51 EST Several months ago I replaced the ST225 mechanism in my SH205 with a Seagate ST251. After some difficulties with the Atari formatting utilities (V5.x , I think) not even recognising a device was connected I tried the Supra utilities. Same problem. I then tried the earlier Atari utilities and it recognised a device was there and moved to the format options. I then tried the Supra utilities and was in business. Initially everything worked fine , but after a few weeks the drive started locking up. This got worse and the unit had to be forceably thumped after powering down to get things released and rebooted. a few more weeks and the unit was unusable. I tyhought it was the Seagate and replaced it with a 3 1/2 NEC unit that worked well initially. Then about three weeks ago the NEC started exhibiting the same symptons. It appears to be able to recover from this better than the Seagate , but the symptons appear to be worsening and I fear damage is slowing occuring. It appears to be a case of the heads being shifted into a position that they lock into. HELP !!!!!!!!! Can anyone assist me here ??? ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 13 Sun Dec 05, 1993 C.NOLES at 01:31 EST hi...well i'm completely new to hard drives...i own an atari 1040st and am thinking about adding a hard drive..we have only one atari dealer in town so his prices are $$$$$$$$$ ...what i need is info in general ...like... what hard drives will operate w/ an atari 1040...what (if any) mods would need to be made ...well put simply what do i need to buy & how do i install it? hanx in advance CE Noles ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 14 Sun Dec 05, 1993 B.SEMAAN [BOSEM] at 08:22 EST Phil, These are just wild guesses, but I would check for: 1) hostile operating environment. i.e. extreme heat, cold, moisture, etc. 2) wrong voltage. (Least likely) test with a VOM at drive's side. 3) improper orientation. Is the unit mounted upside down or at an angle? Some drives are sensitive to gravity and cannot be operated at certain orientations/angles. I do know Seagate drives cannot be mounted upside down (circuit board up), or front panel end up or down. Seagate also claimes a maximum angle of +-5 degrees tolerance for mounting. Maxtor on the other hand claims their new drives (at least the ones I've seen manuals for) can be mounted at any attitude. You might have better luck contacting Seagate or NEC and asking them what conditions would cause the symptoms you are experiencing. There is also the possiblility of an unfortunate coincidence. -Bob ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 15 Sun Dec 05, 1993 J.MEEHAN3 [>> Joe M << ] at 10:49 EST Phil, In addition to what has already been said you might have gotten to bad drives in a row (unlikely), maybe they both had an early case of the sickies. Personally if I did not find any environmental problems I would look at my ST. Maybe there is a problem in it's hardware. It does not sound like it from your description but... One last suggestion, maybe this should have been first. Have the two drives you have used used the same power supply? (Your internal ST supply or a supply in a hard drive case? Maybe a a controler board? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ more.... Noles, You will want a SCSI drive (there are lots of them you can use just about any generic SCSI) and you will need a host adapter (this one is Atari specific). There are a number of mail order sources for drives. You might want to check out the mail order prices, then pay your local dealer a call. See what he is willing to do for you. Remember a local dealer is a real advantage, especially if installation does not go exactly as planned. You might want to contact. Toad Computers 410-544-6943 800-448-8623 (Orders) I C D Inc, (815) 968-2228 Computer Studio 800-253-0201 >> Joe M << ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 16 Sun Dec 05, 1993 J.HAYDEN [JOHN] at 14:46 EST Phil, You may want to make sure that the power supply has enough current to spin up the drive. Some drives have the problem of sticking. How old are the drives? John A. Hayden Sunday December 05 ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 17 Sun Dec 05, 1993 L.LLAGUNO [LOWE] at 19:49 EST I've got a problem that's not major in nature--just irritating at times. The story goes as follows... I replaced the old Seagate ST138N in my SupraDrive with a Quantum LP120S (ID#0, LUN#0) which was formatted with the utilities from the Supra Hard Disk Utilities v4.10. No problems with getting up and running with the hard drive. Later I acquired a Quantum P40S and installed it as a second drive from the same Supra HA. The P40S is the last mechanism on the SCSI chain (ID#1, LUN#0) with terminating resistor packs installed. Terminating resistors on LP120S removed. Hard disks are partitioned as follows: o LP120S: C-J (C-I=16Mb, J=9Mb) o P40S: K-M (K-L=16Mb, M=9Mb) Computer: 1040STf with TOS 1.0 & 2.5Mb RAM The problem: Sometimes, at bootup, the second hard disk mech isn't "recognized" by the computer. I check it via MultiDesk and the K-M partitions aren't displayed (ie. greyed-out). Rebooting the computer (cold/warm) usually corrects the problem and I get all my partitions recognized by the system. However, there are times when I have to reboot (cold/warm) more than once to get the second drive recognized. By this time both hard disk mechs should be up to speed... Anyone have an explanation for this? Like I said, it's not a major problem. It's just a "pain in the neck" when I want to access the partitions on the second drive and they aren't there. -= Lowe =- Monday, December 6, 1993 at 1:21:38 am CET ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 18 Sun Dec 05, 1993 ARCHIVIST [Charlie] at 21:57 EST C.Noles, starting at the top.... Your STfm or STe has a hard drive port on the back. This is a DMA port (direct memory access, I think). The most common Hard Drives around use a SCSI port (small computer serial interface), so you need something to adapt your DMA port to SCSI. Your dealer can sell you a hard drive in an external case with such an adapter built into it. This, however, would mean that in the future (if you upgrade to a newer machine, Atari or otherwise) you would have to remove the adapter from the case to continue using that hard drive. Another solution, more versatile, is to buy The Link from ICD. The Link is a small adaptor in it's own box; one end plugs into your DMA port and the other into the SCSI port on the hard drive. This, I think, is more versatile because there are many, many places to buy a prepackaged SCSI hard drive already including the case, power supply and cables. It also makes moving the hard drive to another computer in the future much easier. Either way you go, you will need some utilities to format, partition and boot your hard drive. Atari's own utilities are here in our library, or you can buy an excellent package from ICD. The puchase of a Link includes ICD's utilities. All that remains once you've settled this is to figure out what kind of HD you want; fixed or removable; what brand; what size. Good luck. :-) Please ask if you have any more questions! Charlie/sysop ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 19 Mon Dec 06, 1993 R.ZALISCHUK [ ROBZAL ] at 03:13 EST Hello folks... I've been putting pen and pad to work on the idea of adding an external hard drive to my Mega STe and its internal drive. Going back to mid October I found a couple of interesting messages between Brian H. and Wayne Watson. Can it be as straight forward as A - buy the case, the hard drive, make sure the id # is different B - change dip switch #3 in the Mega STe case C - connect the cable Some questions..... Is dip switch #3 unrelated to the terminating/unterminating issue? Using my Nov. Current Notes as a reference Would a Toad Stealth mean a straight SCSI connection to..... the Modem 2 port on the Mega? Would a Classic Toadplus mead a straight DMA connection? From Wayne's message it seems a SCSI to DMA connection would require a second host adapter, would it also mean an ICD Link? .....Brian, what have you ended up doing and how is it working? What is the 'recommended' 'advisable' or 'popular' method of adding an external hard drive to the Mega STe? Robert Z. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 20 Mon Dec 06, 1993 BRIAN.H [ST~SysOp] at 05:27 EST Robert, I haven't done anything yet. A trip to Scotland has delayed my buying plans. ~~Brian..Written on Monday 06 December 1993 at 06:28 a.m. ADT ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 21 Mon Dec 06, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 08:02 EST CE Noles, You buy a Link, made by ICD, which is a small SCSI adaptor, and add a SCSI hard drive. The Small Computer Systems Interface is the standard for connecting hard drives and other items to personal computers, and is used by the Mac and by many PCs as well as the Atari line. (TTs, for example, have SCSI connections built in.) The Link is $100 list, and is often available used (they never break, so a used one is fine) for a lot less. SCSI drives in external cases vary in price from $200 to multi-mega prices. You'll undoubtedly also find used, complete HD systems here on GEnie in the appropriate discussion areas (for sale items). Expect to pay $200 to $300 for one. Al ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 22 Mon Dec 06, 1993 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 08:31 EST Robert, Yes, it pretty much straight foward. You can... 1) Buy a case and SCSI drive and a longer cable. Add a header onto the cable and hook it into the internal drive (daisy chain them). Turn Dip #3 on, remove the terminating resistors from the first drive in the chain, change the SCSI number on the 2nd drive to 1, put it all together and then power it up. If everything went ok, you should now have 2 drives. 2) Buy an external case with drive and an ICD Link. Change the SCSI ID number of the external to 1 and power it up. Since you now have an ICD host Adapter, you can now use their GREAT software. You could then backup your drive, reset it up using the ICD software and trash the Atari HD software. Any ICD HA should work but is a little more work than the Link. You can get an SCSI drive (Mac type) that has the case, power supply and drives pretty cheap. The type to get is one that has the SCSI type connector on the case (looks something like a printer connector). With option 1, you could then get a cable that has the SCSI connector on one end and the standard 50 pin drive connector on the other end. This would allow you to use the drive on other systems. If you then get another computer, you could get an ICD Link and plug it straight into the extra drive without opening the case. Either way, get a case that has the SCSI connector on the back. This will help but, not necessary. I am not sure about your reference to the SCSI and modem 2. Never heard of this before. Dip #3 is related to multiple drives on the Atari HA. With it off, you can only have 1 drive connected and be recognized. If the Classic Toadplus has seperate Host Adapter, then yes, it would mean a straight DMA connection (after you change the SCSI ID). You could of course remove the HA and use option 1. There is no real recommended, advisable, etc. way. It's all up to what you want. Me, I would just buy an external drive and case and hook it into the internal host adapter. That will save you about $100.00. You could then take $50 of that you saved and spend it on the ICD Pro software and dump the Atari software. You want regret it. The ICD Pro software allows you to run the ICD software on any Atari computer without the need of an ICD host adapter. I have hooked up a second drive to the internal HA when I first got the MSTE to transfer data over to the internal drive so, I know it works. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 23 Wed Dec 08, 1993 R.ZALISCHUK [ ROBZAL ] at 02:20 EST Wayne, Thanks for the answer. Option 1...buying the case, SCSI drive and tagging into the internal host is the option I (and my budget) favour. Could you please expand on one sentence.... "Add a header onto the cable and hook it into the internal drive" The term 'header' goes right over my head Secondly, where are you hooking it into the internal drive? On the back of my Mega STe I see 1) VME 2) ACSI which is the DMA 3) a 9 pin port labelled Modem 2 digging around the manual it's a second RS232 port I was presuming it to be a SCSI port. Thanks... Robert Z. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 24 Wed Dec 08, 1993 L.LLAGUNO [LOWE] at 19:14 EST I posted a question a little while back but it seems that nobody has seen it. Or has this question (or something similar) been already answered in the past? Anyway, here's a repost... I've got a problem that's not major in nature--just irritating at times. The story goes as follows... I replaced the old Seagate ST138N in my SupraDrive with a Quantum LP120S (ID#0, LUN#0) which was formatted with the utilities from the Supra Hard Disk Utilities v4.10. No problems with getting up and running with the hard drive. Later I acquired a Quantum P40S and installed it as a second drive from the same Supra HA. The P40S is the last mechanism on the SCSI chain (ID#1, LUN#0) with terminating resistor packs installed. Terminating resistors on LP120S removed. Hard disks are partitioned as follows: o LP120S: C-J (C-I=16Mb, J=9Mb) o P40S: K-M (K-L=16Mb, M=9Mb) Computer: 1040STf with TOS 1.0 & 2.5Mb RAM The problem: Sometimes, at bootup, the second hard disk mech isn't "recognized" by the computer. I check it via MultiDesk and the K-M partitions aren't displayed (ie. greyed-out). Rebooting the computer (cold/warm) usually corrects the problem and I get all my partitions recognized by the system. However, there are times when I have to reboot (cold/warm) more than once to get the second drive recognized. By this time both hard disk mechs should be up to speed... Anyone have an explanation for this? Like I said, it's not a major problem. It's just a "pain in the neck" when I want to access the partitions on the second drive and they aren't there. -= Lowe =- Monday, December 6, 1993 at 1:21:38 am CET (date of original post) ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 25 Thu Dec 09, 1993 J.MEEHAN3 [>> Joe M << ] at 05:10 EST Message 24, Wed Dec 08, 1993 L.LLAGUNO [LOWE] It sounds like your second drive is just not up to speed when the booter is checking for drives so it get missed. By the time you reboot it is up and running so it is found. >> Joe M << ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 26 Thu Dec 09, 1993 M.TROUPE [Helium] at 05:57 EST Lowe, No explanations for your problem. I had the same problem when I added on a Syquest to my system. Finally had to replace a power supply and one hard drive (unrelated cause). After setting up the new hard drive, I ended up with ICD utilities to work with and the boot-up problem disappeared. There is supposed to be a program in the library which will poll your hard drive twice on boot-up. This will bring it up on the initial boot. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 27 Thu Dec 09, 1993 L.LLAGUNO [LOWE] at 17:49 EST >Atari-ST RoundTable >Category 4, Topic 39 >Message 25 Thu Dec 09, 1993 >J.MEEHAN3 [>> Joe M << ] at 05:10 EST > > It sounds like your second drive is just not up to speed when > the booter is checking for drives so it get missed. By the time you > reboot it is up and running so it is found. I often have to reboot 2 or more times to get the second drive recognized. I'd expect that both drives should be up to speed by at least the 3rd reboot. >Atari-ST RoundTable >Category 4, Topic 39 >Message 26 Thu Dec 09, 1993 >M.TROUPE [Helium] at 05:57 EST > > There is supposed to be a program in the library which will poll your hard >drive twice on boot-up. This will bring it up on the initial boot. I found two such programs in the library: "SCSI Wait 2" & "BooTyme 2". I've been working more with "SCSI Wait 2" because it allows the user to select the SCSI ID#s that represent the hard disks connected to the host adapter. Unfortunately, when "SCSI Wait" reports the selected ID#s are ready and the boot sequence ends, I often find the second drive partitions still not recognized. You say you've switched to the ICD Utilities. Are these the "Pro Utilities"? -= Lowe =- Thursday, December 9, 1993 at 11:44:06 pm CET ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 28 Thu Dec 09, 1993 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 20:35 EST Robert, Header is just another word for connector. All you do is take the ribbon cable (you will need a longer one though) and add a connector (like the one connected to the internal drive) to the cable. You would then just run the cable from the HA -> first drive (probably internal) then to the other drive. HA connector ................... ................... | | | ................... ................... connector for first drive | | | ................... ................... connector for second drive I didn't put the lines for all the pins. Too much work but, I think you get the idea. :-) You may even find a premade cable at your local computer center. I always just make my own as it is cheaper plus, I can put the connectors where I want them. I believe that the SCSI cable can be up to 50' long but, you want to keep it as short as you can and still be functional. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 29 Fri Dec 10, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 03:24 EST What Joe said. And I'd also say the power supply is flakey. Al ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 30 Fri Dec 10, 1993 M.TROUPE [Helium] at 04:42 EST Lowe, I ended up with just the regular utilities. Whatever comes with the ADSCSI+. Never had problems after that and the actual bootup was a lot quicker than with the Supra utilities. (Shrug) Can't tell you why though. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 31 Sat Dec 11, 1993 R.ZALISCHUK [ ROBZAL ] at 20:52 EST Thanks for your help Wayne, its been a good education. I'm not a car person, so my Mega STe has been my biggest purchase and I think I get a bit over cautious about it. Robert Z. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 32 Sun Dec 12, 1993 P.WALDING [Phil Walding] at 17:07 EST I would like to say a big 'Thank You' to all those who responded to my earlier cries for help. I don't know if I have really got to the bottom of the problem , but following a few alterations have not had any problems with the NEC drive locking heads for some days now. I usually run Michtron's hard drive Turbo Kit once a week to de-frag my working partitions (C & D) and set all partitions to be optimised for 'mostly read'. With the lock ups occuring , often it was the D partiton only , which is really only ued for Data Diet (II). Since I installed Data Diet (I) I have been plagued with 'shrinking space' due to used clusters not being allocated to a file. This used to be accompanied with 0 byte files left in Data Diet's work directory. When I replaced the 20 meg mechanism in my SH205 with a 0 meg mechanism I decided to set up a 5 meg partiton for Data Diet only. I have reset this partiton to 'mostly written' with the Turbo Kit software and have had no problems since. It may be coincidence , but I guess time will tell. Has anyone any inspirational suggestions to pass on regarding this hopefully expired problem. Once again , many thanks. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 33 Tue Dec 14, 1993 C.NOLES at 22:00 EST To all...thanx for the help...i'll start searching and saving...will let you know what happens... ce noles ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 34 Tue Dec 21, 1993 B.BOILEN [tinydesk] at 22:16 EST I was trying to optimize my hard drive using a program called toolkit prg. the result was that my partition F became my partition E and partition E is nowhere to be found. If I look at the format using the ICD format program(I believe version 5.2) I can see that it is still there, though the name has vanished. Is there anyway I can retrieve this valuable info with any of your software? another question I have regards the restoring of a hard drive partition. If I reformat my drive giving partitions different sizes than they were when I backed up the drive, will the restoration be successful, providing of course that the partition is larger than it was before and not smaller? ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 35 Tue Dec 21, 1993 DAEDWARDS [Warrl] at 23:33 EST B.Boilen: I just put a commentary on backup/restore software in Cat 4 Top 31 a few days ago; suggest you read that topic even if the particular hardware is of no interest to you. Summary: if you have decent software, you can do pretty much anything you like on a hard drive restore. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 36 Tue Dec 21, 1993 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 23:46 EST Tiny, If you know what your partition sizes were before, you can use the 'Write Partition info only' option in the Partition section of the Format program. Just enter the information that was there before and select it. Reboot the computer after you quit and it should return. If you have Cleanup, you can also use the 'Fix' option under the 'Hard Disk' selection. Make sure you have a backup of the drive first, just in case. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 37 Sun Dec 26, 1993 D.ODONNELL1 at 15:48 EST Hard dirve format question: I bought a used Supra 85 meg drive. It is di divided into 7 partitions. 3 partitions are ST format, 4 partitions are 'OOP' format. Is it possible to only reformat the 'OOP' partitions, or does the entire HD have to be reformatted? ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 38 Mon Dec 27, 1993 J.HAYDEN [JOHN] at 02:06 EST It is possible to rebuilt the OOP partitions into GEM using the ICD format program. I have done this in the past. John A. Hayden Monday December 27 ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 39 Mon Dec 27, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 09:02 EST O. O'D., You need to reformat the entire drive to to it safely. You might be able to change the OOP partitions to Atari partitions separately, but I wouldn't do that, for another reason: 7 partitions in an 85-meg drive is a little much. With either ICD or Atari HD software, you can have partitions as large as you want, so I'd suggest the following schemes: One: C: 5 megs D: 32 megs E: 32 megs F: 16 megs Two: C: 5 megs D: 40 megs E: 40 megs Three: C: 21 megs D: 32 megs E: 32 megs There are inherent advantages to each arrangement. One and three keep partition sizes down to the 32-meg GEM limit (if you have TOS 1.04 or greater, 32 megs is the largest GEM partition; under older TOSes, 16 is). Two is easier to manage if you have a lot of large files. Partitions larger than 16 megs are not supported in any way by TOS 1.00 and 1.02. But with TOS 1.04 and higher, a partition larger than 32 megs is set up as a Big GEM (BGM) partition, without any problem. I have a lot of BGMs in my main setup, all 256 megs in size. BTW, I recommend keeping C: as small as possible. It's a LOT easier to back up and to fix if something goes wrong. And it keeps you from cluttering up the boot drive with stuff that does not need to go there. On a 1,400-meg system, my C: drive holds only 4 megs. All my accessories are in a folder on D:, for example. Al ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 40 Mon Dec 27, 1993 D.BRADBURD [DCB] at 22:34 EST I'm having a problem with a Supra 20 mg HD that seems to have gone bad. It won't boot and when its turned on it revs to speed but has added an additional skipping noise to the usual ones. It continues this sound (as if trying to access the disk) for about 4 minutes and then goes silent. Upon examination the opulse seems to coming from the motor or shaft area. I tried to boot off Drive a with Supra Utilities but the drive would light the busy light and kick out the program. In desperation I tried to reformat. The Supra.fmt was able to access the drive and get its type and start the disk spinning and then clicking through the format process. Then it would bail out with an error message indicating that a Write error had occurred. I repeated this a number of times with the same result. QUESTIONS: 1) Anyone want to guess what's going on? 2) Supra's gone..no answer or forwarding #...anyone know of a Supra repair spot? 3) Is it possible to replace the miniscribe unit with a similar one? a larger capacity miniscribe? Another SCSI drive? I'm pretty handy inside keyboards and floppys but I've never been in an HD. I'd appreciate any tips those of you on the bbs have. I'm dead in the water with a batch of DTP to do. Thanks a lot. DCB ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 41 Mon Dec 27, 1993 DAEDWARDS [Warrl] at 23:43 EST D.Bradburd: The "Map Bad Sectors" operation which, I think, is in SUPUTIL, *might* rescue this drive. Afterward you'll need to format it again. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 42 Tue Dec 28, 1993 J.MEEHAN3 [>> Joe M << ] at 05:22 EST DCB It sounds like you are at the end of the life of that 20 meger. A 20 meg drive is not worth the cost of repair! You can get a new drive in the 50-150 meg size that will be faster and cheaper than you imagine. The newer drives are likely to draw less power as well. Get a new drive for a late Christams present. You should be able to use any SCSI drive. Joe M ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 43 Tue Dec 28, 1993 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 06:26 EST DCB, Sounds like a hardware problem to me. Sounds like the drive has died. I believe the Supra drives were all SCSI which means any 3.5" SCSI drive should be able to be placed directly into the case. I know I did it with one. There are some nice sized SCSI drives for sale for cheap prices. A Maxtor 7245S (245 meg) sells for about $350 - $400. Check out the file ONLINEAD.TXT from Lotsa Bytes in the libraries. They have some decent prices on HDs. The 3 HDs companies that I know are good are Maxtor, Quantum and Micropolis. BTW, make sure you get a drive that can have the parity disabled on it. Most places would know what you mean especially an Atari dealer like Lotsa Bytes. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 44 Tue Dec 28, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 08:12 EST DCB, Supra is very much in business. But the drive is no doubt telling you it's time for it to retire. SCSI drives are quite cheap these days, less than $1 a megabyte, and a new unit will swap right in. For $200 to $300 you can get a really good drive. (Don't look for a MiniScribe; that's the company whose chief executive officer discovered that his employees were putting bricks into HD boxes instead of hard drives, and it went belly-up. Someone else bought the operation, but a good Maxtor, Quantum or Seagate is a perfect choice.) Al ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 45 Tue Dec 28, 1993 G.ZEPKA1 [Greg] at 23:35 EST DCB, I have a Supra 20mg drive, but it is on extended loan. It has a atari hardrive connector to SCSI then a SCSI to MFM adapter. I would go straight to a SCSI drive. I recommend Quantam, the one I would accually pay for. I suggest that you get a hold of Supras latest drivers and take a look at what type drives it runs, bur remember that you need a small physical size drive to fit in the box. If they can't help ICD sells their drivers to run on any adapter. Supra can be reached at 503 967 2440. Their BBS is 503 967 2444, thier drivers I belive use to be on the BBS, and probaly somewhere on GENIE as well. They sell alot of modem now SuppraFAXmodem. \ Greg ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 46 Wed Dec 29, 1993 D.BRADBURD [DCB] at 00:05 EST To: Warrl, Joe, Wayne, Al & Greg: Many thanks for your responses. Your advice has saved me a lot of time & dec decision making. I'll contact Supra re: what drivers are available and look for the best replacement (The MAP function did not work). Meanwhile I'll limp on floppies, a near-forgotten art. DCB ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 47 Wed Dec 29, 1993 B.SEMAAN [BOSEM] at 06:30 EST Al, Maxtor took over the Miniscribe line. Bob ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 48 Wed Dec 29, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 12:40 EST DCB, I's buy the ICD pro drivers, if they work on a Supra. Al ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 49 Wed Dec 29, 1993 CAN-ASST [Connor] at 16:29 EST I was wondering if it's possible to use an IDE hard drive in a 520 STfm, and if so where I can get a controller for it and how much said controller would cost. ... Connor ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 50 Wed Dec 29, 1993 BRIAN.H [ST~SysOp] at 16:56 EST hi there Connor! Welcome over from the Canada RT! Actually inside a STfm. Gee, there isn't much room inside there and personally it wouldn't be a good idea. Technically, it may be possible if you don't mind the work but practically the answer is get an external HD. BTW, once you have a HD, you never go back! ~~Brian..Written on Wednesday 29 December 1993 at 05:53 p.m. ADT ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 51 Wed Dec 29, 1993 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 21:15 EST Conner, There is no IDE controller for the ST(e)/TT line. Only the Falcon. Noone has made one that I am aware of. Your best bet would be External SCSI. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 52 Thu Dec 30, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 03:25 EST Bob, Thanks. But the Maxtors we all know and love aren't the MiniScribe takeovers. I think all the MiniScribe/Maxtors are being sent to Sadam Hussein.... Al ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 53 Fri Dec 31, 1993 D.WALTER7 [Doug Walter] at 00:35 EST Continuing the Supra box/SCSI drive thread, is there a way to get the Supra board and drivers to recognize a Quantum 105S? After reading these last messages, I swapped the original (working) Seagate 30 for the Quantum, but I can't get the Supra's boot prog, formatter, or utility program to recognise the drive. It keeps telling me I have the wrong SCSI or LUN IDs. Both drives were originally set to 0 and 0, and I have tried entering just about every possible combination of the two. For that matter, I can't figure how to "set" the LUN number anyway. Docs are no help. Is there a limit to what size drive the Supra controller will handle? I am using the 4.10 Supra Utilities on a 1040 STe w/ 4 megs and TOS 2.06. The Quantum 105S was formatted w/ Atari's 5.0 and will have to be reformatted, if I can get it to be recognized :-) BTW, the Quantum was working OK when pulled from my TT. Doug7 ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 54 Fri Dec 31, 1993 J.MEEHAN3 [>> Joe M << ] at 09:05 EST Message 53, Fri Dec 31, 1993 D.WALTER7 [Doug Walter] Doug, I would think the Supra software will work with your new drive, it does not sound like a software problem to me. How about the terminal resistor? Does the new 105 have it in place? I don't know what to say about the host adapter. >> Joe M << ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 55 Fri Dec 31, 1993 D.WALTER7 [Doug Walter] at 12:29 EST Joe, RE: fitting a Q105S into a Supra SCSI box The 105S was my TT's internal until just recently. No jumpers were changed. I also had two external devices on the SCSI chain. It looks like the 3 resistor packs are soldered in place. I would think that they were "active" being that the internal drive chain needed to be terminated _as well as_ the last device on the external chain, correct? Hmm, perhaps there is a jumper that I need to move or install, much as Maxtor's "terminator power" (J301). I don't have any docs on the Quantum 105S, but I see a block with 3 sets of pins labeled "SS", "EP", and "WS", with the "EP" set being jumpered. "Enable Parity", maybe? The seperate address pins are all un-jumpered. On the TT it read SCSI 0 and LUN 0. We can't get a reading on the STe of course, so I have no idea what it is doing. The Supra's host adapter is unlabeled and remains a mystery to me :-) Doug7 ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 56 Fri Dec 31, 1993 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 21:06 EST Doug, You need to remove the jumper on the 'EP' pins. That will disable parity. That should get you working. Not sure what the 'SS' and 'WS' are. Also, with SCSI drives, you will ALWAYS have a LUN of 0. Only the SCSI ID changes. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 57 Sat Jan 01, 1994 L.MCCLURE at 08:20 EST D.BRADBURD [DCB]: I had a similar problem, and it turned out to be from an unlikely source: the power supply. If you have access to a multimeter or other voltage testing instrument, you may want to check the +5 volt and +12 volt lines to make certain they are up to spec. My PS turned out to have a cyclical voltage sag. BTW, if this does turn out to be your problem, I suggest backing up the files on the drive and reformatting as a precaution. I did not, and evidently some of the vital information on the drive got scrambled, resulting in write errors until I renewed the boot software and reformatted one troublesome partition. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 58 Sat Jan 01, 1994 M.ADLER2 [Merwin] at 11:41 EST My 20 meg Supra has crashed several times in the last couple of years. Don't know why just decided to go to never never land!!! It usually took several attempts to get it to format and finally got things talking again....not too sure as to why all the trouble...I won't ever buy one of these darn things ever again! I am right this minute looking for a new system with 80-100 meg and not sure which way to go yet. Budget is $400 tops! Good luck with yours and don't give up....it will come back to life one of these days. Merwin ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 59 Mon Jan 03, 1994 B.CONNOLLY1 [Bud] at 00:45 EST >Hmm, perhaps there is a jumper that I need to move or install, much as >Maxtor's "terminator power" (J301). I don't have any docs on the Quantum > 105S, but I see a block with 3 sets of pins labeled "SS", "EP", and >"WS", with the "EP" set being jumpered. "Enable Parity", maybe? > What about the the Maxtor's "Terminator Power" (J301)? I am trying to get a 7245S to run with a Mega STe and internal host adapter, but no luck so far. According to the Maxtor BBS docs, that jumper is installed by default, should I take it off? thanx Bud ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 60 Mon Jan 03, 1994 D.CRANO [Big D] at 02:08 EST >What about the the Maxtor's "Terminator Power" (J301)? I am trying >to get a 7245S to run with a Mega STe and internal host adapter, but >no luck so far. According to the Maxtor BBS docs, that jumper is >installed by default, should I take it off? > >thanx Bud > >---------- > Bud, Don Crano here we talked on the phone the other night.... No you do not want to remove the terminate power jumper.. If you have the parity disabled and have removed the termination packs on the drive and it still does not want to show it's self to the boot software then call Len or me....... Later, Don ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 61 Thu Jan 06, 1994 STEPHENSON [Bob in ABQ] at 09:49 EST My ICD hard drive works just fine with my Mega 2. I tried to hook it to a Mega 4, which works fine without the HD, but it won't boot the HD; it just distorts the screen when I try. The ICD software recognizes the drive, however. The Mega 4 has these things different from the old Mega 2: 1. A 16 mhz accelerator 2. A Tweety Board 3. TOS 1.2 vs 1.4 Question: should any of those three things affect the operation of a hard drive; such as, if a HD is set up at 8 mhz will it not work at 16 mhz? I have switched DMA chips with no effect. Thanks in advance, Bob in Albuquerque ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 62 Thu Jan 06, 1994 ICDINC at 11:21 EST Bob, Is your first partition over 16 MB? That would cause a serious problem. Have you had any hard drives working on your Mega 4? It could be a bad DMA circuit. - TOM - ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 63 Fri Jan 07, 1994 J.MEEHAN3 [>> Joe M << ] at 05:30 EST Message 61, Thu Jan 06, 1994 STEPHENSON [Bob in ABQ] I don't know about 1 or 2, but if it works on TOS 1.02 TOS 1.04 should not be a problem, the other way around you may need to watch out for oversized partitions. >> Joe M << ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 64 Fri Jan 07, 1994 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 07:59 EST Bob, I'll bet the TOS 1.02 Mega can't recognize the sector formatting of the drive used on the TOS 1.04 machine. TOS 1.00 and 1.02 cannot handle partitions larger than 16 megs. TOS 1.04 and newer TOSes can handle 32 meg partitions in all cases, and much larger partitions in most cases. (The exceptions come not from the drives or the driver software but from other software that may not recognize the larger sector sizes.) Al ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 65 Fri Jan 07, 1994 R.SNYDER6 [Roger S.] at 20:41 EST Al, When you say that TOS 1.02 can not habdle partitions over 16 megs, you mean in formatting the hard disk? I have a 20 megs partition that I use on my 1.02 ST all the time. --Roger ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 66 Fri Jan 07, 1994 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 22:54 EST Roger, That's news to me. My information was that TOS 1.04 is the earliest TOS that provides 16-bit FATs, but I could be wrong. TOS 1.00 had 12-bit FATs, and could only address 16 megs in a partition. I am stumped as to what TOS 1.02 provides. Al ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 67 Fri Jan 07, 1994 B.CONNOLLY1 [Bud] at 22:57 EST Big D Thanx for the info Don. As for the hard drive and host adapter, I'm taking it back to Len tomorrow to see if he can revive it. Bud ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 68 Sat Jan 08, 1994 ICDINC at 00:05 EST Roger and Al are both right. TOS 1.4 was the first to allow "double size partitions. Those went up to 32 MB. Of course that is a GEM parition not BGM which later pushed the limit to around 256 MB using "logical sectors". If you run GEM paritions over 16 MB on TOS versions less than 1.4 you will have problems. - TOM - ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 69 Sat Jan 08, 1994 R.COOPER2 [Rob] at 00:57 EST Al: According to the manual for my ICD AdSCSI host adaptor, the partition that you are using to BOOT from may not exceed 16.77 Megs or 32768 sectors on TOS 1.0 and 1.02. This size is doubled starting with TOS 1.04. My TOS 1.02 1040STf has no problems recognizing BGM partitions larger than 16Mb, but my C: partition which I boot from is a GEM partition, <16Mb. Rob ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 70 Sat Jan 08, 1994 ICDINC at 07:41 EST Rob, That limitation ended and should be documented in the README file. With older versions you could only boot fro a GEM partition. Now we can boot from a BGM as well. (from not fro) - TOM - ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 71 Sat Jan 08, 1994 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 12:57 EST Tom, Thanks. But how, then, can he have a 20-meg TOS 1.02 partition? (Are the last 4 megs not accessible?) Rob, The limit on a boot partition disappeared long ago. I DON'T recommend using a large C: partition (and Tom here has championed the same cause), but I have set up a C: partition of 256 megs and used it for a few months. My C: is now quite small, as things go: The others are 256, but it's a mere 48 megs.... Al ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 72 Sat Jan 08, 1994 R.SNYDER6 [Roger S.] at 15:48 EST Thanks for clarifying Tom. My larger partitions are BGM. I'm always glad what seems to work really does! Someday I'll get all my STs operating on the same version of TOS. --Roger ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 73 Sat Jan 08, 1994 R.COOPER2 [Rob] at 16:30 EST TOM: Ahh... I wasn't aware of the limitation no longer BEING a limitation! ;^) I'm currently using 6.2.0 and to be honest I don't think I really read the README file... it's a bad habit I've got... then again, that specific ability doesn't really come in handy with my lone SyQuest 44meg Removable... :^( Thanks, though! What version did this start with? I first used 6.0.0, now I'm using 6.2.0. Al: Your C: partition is larger than my entire hard drive capacity! Now I'm REALLY bummed!! This is one thing I really like about this forum... you think you're helping someone out, when actually YOU are the one being helped! Very cool... :^) Rob ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 74 Sat Jan 08, 1994 STEPHENSON [Bob in ABQ] at 16:38 EST Thanks, you guys, for your thoughts on my 2nd Mega that won't boot my HD. No, all partitions are 16 meg or less, I even tried it with the 1.4 ROMS and switching DMA chips. I do not know that this jewel has ever run a HD. I will keep tinkering. I was hoping it was simply the 16 mhz or the Tweety Board. Bob in Albuquerque ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 75 Sat Jan 08, 1994 ICDINC at 17:03 EST Al, Under TOS 1.02 (1.2) you can have a parition as large as 256 MB. Anything over 16 MB will be BGM. Anything under will be GEM. Rob, THe last manual update was done in 1990. Changes beyond that are documented in README or WHATSNEW files. I am not sure when we added booting to BGM partitions but I think it was more than 1 year ago. Bob, IT is beginning to sound like a bad DMA port on that computer. - TOM - ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 76 Sat Jan 08, 1994 R.COOPER2 [Rob] at 20:12 EST TOM: Thanks.... I'm going to go and read my README files to find out what other features all my software has!! I promise to pay more attention to them from now on... :^) Rob ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 77 Sat Jan 08, 1994 R.L.BROOKS [Bob] at 23:11 EST Al I am using 32 meg partitions under ICD host adapter and software with Tos 1.00 Bob ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 78 Sun Jan 09, 1994 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 13:37 EST Rob, My sentiments, too. GEnie is the single best peripheral for any Atari. :) Tom, You added booting to BGMs probably FIVE years ago, believe it or not. Al ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 79 Fri Jan 14, 1994 S.DEITZ [Steve] at 21:41 EST Help! I did my best but enough is enough already. I have the following setup Falcon 4/85 (TOS 4.04) SyQuest 88e (SCSI 0) chained to-> SyQuest 88c (44/88 r/w) (SCSI 1) chained to-> NEC CDR-38 CD ROM drive (SCSI 2) terminated. I just added the 88e to my system and things got real wierd. I was sure I had everything hooked up correctly from "go", but I was having partitions not register and all kinds of r/w errors. I finally got settled down (I think) with the CD out of the chain and the 88c terminated. I tried the CD w/ a few different ID settings, but still no good. This happens with the AHDI driver as well as the Pro booter. My IDE drive runs fine; as it appears the CD does too when it's connected. If this matters: I use a ScreenBlaster and the symptoms occur even with bare AUTO/ACC setup. The ICD Pro booter returns < .] at 05:12 EST Bob: When you say your using "ICD boot 6.something" are you running the ICDBOOT.PRG program from the floppy disk first? If so does your screen tell you the driver has installed? I'n not sure your running th ICDBOOT.PRG first before you try to run the other programs. David <>< ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 102 Sat Jan 22, 1994 R.SADLER [Bob] at 15:13 EST Grouch (wish I'd thought of that one), Parity problems. Gosh I didn't want to hear that. Well, I left a message to ICD a few days ago and haven't recieved a reply yet. I'm just getting anxious to get this drive up and running. I also left a message in the ICD roundtable so maybe someone there will come up with a solution. If I don't get anything concrete this weekend I'll call ICD Monday. Thanks for the help. David, Yes, I am running the ICDBOOT.PRG from an AUTO folder off of an ICD utilities disk. The driver installs but it says that there is a 4070 controller or something like that installed. Thanks. Bob ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 103 Sat Jan 22, 1994 V.BITOWF1 [VINCE] at 16:50 EST DCB, I have a similar problem with my Supra. Mine works, but takes about 10-15 minutes to warm up before it will work. I am planing on replacing mine too. The easiest way to do it I think, would be to see what types of drives the Supra utilities support and buy one of those. If you get one that isn't on the list, make sure that you can get all the information that the formatter needs. PS. Have you tried letting it warm up for 10 minutes or so before accessing it? This is a common problem. VB. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 104 Sat Jan 22, 1994 ICDINC [Tom] at 22:37 EST Kerim, Today is your lucky day. Send Email to REALM because he just offered a MAegaFile 30 with bad drive mechanism in the For Sale topic here. It sounds like he wants $30 for it. He thinks the controller is OK. - TOM - ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 105 Sun Jan 23, 1994 B.SEMAAN [BOSEM] at 00:41 EST Bob Sadler, Try running the BOOTFIX.PRG on the ICD disk. The newer versions have some sort of effect on Conner drives if I remember correctly. I would also call Conner on Monday and ask for the jumper ID's for your drive and order a manual. Bob Semaan ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 106 Mon Jan 24, 1994 R.SADLER [Bob] at 19:19 EST Bob Semaan, Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately it didn't help. I did call ICD today and talked to Howard. He does know his drives!! I guess I have two problems. Number 1- the parity on this Conner drive is always enabled. Number 2- I thought I have a AdSCSI host but I guess I don't. It's an older ICD host. It was my understanding that the newer AdSCSI host adapters don't need the parity diabled...at least that was my understanding. I guess I'll have to buy an AdSCSI host to make this drive work. Thanks for the help everyone. Bob ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 107 Wed Jan 26, 1994 R.NELSON48 [Grouch (:{] at 00:41 EST Bob - Some suggestions in liu of a new AdSCSI host; Buy a Falcon, use the drive direct as SCSI, no adaptor needed. Buy a LINK, use the drive direct as SCSI, no other adaptor needed. Take the drive back, trade it in on a Quantem or a Maxtor, even a Seagate. After all, it is Conner's fault the drive wont work. Of course there is nothing wrong with going with ICD. That is what I did when I hit your pot hole. I upgraded to a new host adaptor board and bought the PRO drivers. Then I bought a Falcon and don't need that other stuff. Hmmmm, perhaps you are in the market for a used host adaptor? Contact me in Email. (:{ Grouch. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 108 Wed Jan 26, 1994 R.THUROW [Rich] at 01:17 EST Hi all, I need some advice. My mega 60 (Seagate ST251) is having problems after using pagrestream. When trying to save the file selector shows blank folders. The files are shown to be still there after a reboot. Somtimes after going in and out of folders the entire partition is blanked. Yet a disk info check reveals all is still there. If I do a command from neodesk the files return momentarily. Is my HD on the way to a crash? Edge shows a bad cluster that has been fixed on partition F, otherwise no problems. Why are my files disappearing? TOS 1.02 ADHI 3.0 Thanks, Rich ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 109 Wed Jan 26, 1994 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 07:30 EST Rich, Sounds like a classic case of the 40 folder limit with the older TOSes. Go directly to the library and download FOLDRXXX.??? (not sure of the extension). If you cannot find it, let me know and I will send it to you in Email. It is not a problem with PageStream. If you do not get the patch for the 40 folder bug, you will have some HD problems. It can cause a mess. Do not write to the drive when the mentioned problem occurs. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 110 Wed Jan 26, 1994 DAEDWARDS [Warrl] at 23:26 EST R.Thurow: Stage 1 advice: what Wayne Watson said. Stage 2 advice, if that doesn't work: reformat that hard drive and restore from backup. (You DO have backups, don't you? If not, this may be a problem: making a backup WILL read EVERY file and directory on your disk, and therefore WILL hit whatever problems exist. But do your best.) ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 111 Fri Jan 28, 1994 R.THUROW [Rich] at 02:58 EST Wayne and Warrl re disappearing files. I have FOLDR100.PRG loaded when this happens. I avoid writing to disk when I see the problem, and sometimes it happens after loading a single PGS .DOC file. It appears just like the Folder bug I used to see on TOS 1.0, but I don't think thats it. I cleared the culprit partition and restored all the files but it still does it. Guess its time to reformat. Luckily its just my work machine which has no unique files from my main home machine. Thanks guys, Rich ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 112 Fri Jan 28, 1994 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 03:27 EST FOLDXXX is in the Rainbow TOS package from Atari. Search under RAINBOW. Al ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 113 Fri Jan 28, 1994 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 18:08 EST Rich, Try uping the number from 100 to 300 and see if that helps. It doesn't use that much more room. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 114 Sun Jan 30, 1994 L.SMITH30 [LOUIS] at 11:25 EST Hi: I've been reading the messages for the last few days and now feel one of you may be able to help me. I have a Mega STE 4 with an internal Quantum P105SS. 40megs of this is used as virtual memory by Calamus SL so really I do not have that much space. I would like to buy myself a new Quantum LPS270S but being not much of a bright spark I can only do this if it is a simple straight swap over or very simple changes. I use the ICD Pro software. By the way, am I right in assuming that if I puchased this drive from the States (110v) as against 240v here in Europe it would be OK because the voltage that the drive uses is 12v or 5v etc which the Mega STE transforms? Any information would be greatly appreciated. Regards, Louis (from The Rock of Gibraltar) ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 115 Sun Jan 30, 1994 ST.LOU [Lou Rocha] at 12:14 EST Louis, it should be a straight swap. I have a Quantum LP240S in my STE/4 and it is simple to install. I suggest you send email to S.WINICK for advice on power supplies and pricing. Sheldon Winick runs Computer STudio. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 116 Mon Jan 31, 1994 J.MEEHAN3 [>> Joe M << ] at 05:17 EST Louis, I don't know if the internal 12v/5v power supplies are AC or DC, but if they are AC you should consider the 50/60 cyles question. Best of luck >> Joe M << ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 117 Mon Jan 31, 1994 ICDINC [Tom] at 07:45 EST Hard drives all take DC and work all over the world. - TOM - ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 118 Tue Feb 08, 1994 J.ANTHONY [John Anthony] at 21:23 EST I just did the unthinkable. I erased the FAT on one of my 60 meg partitions on my hard drive. The data is intact. What are my options on restoring the files? ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 119 Wed Feb 09, 1994 ARCHIVIST [Charlie] at 00:05 EST John, it depends on how fragmented or not your data was. Diamond Back's medic utilities would help you restore the FAT for the files it can find, but if the files are too badly spread across the sectors of your HD it's almost a lost cause. Diamond Back is a commercial program from Oregon Research. They're here on- line if you need their help. Charlie/sysop ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 120 Wed Feb 09, 1994 DAEDWARDS [Warrl] at 01:34 EST John Anthony: Your best bet is to restore from backup. Anything else will be misery at best, unless you RECENTLY did a defragment. And if you did that, why the didn't you do a backup first? ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 121 Wed Feb 09, 1994 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 02:15 EST John, Not much on the options side of things. You really did it good when you erased the FAT. If you have a backup of the FAT tables, etc. then there is hope. If you have done a pretty recent Image backup, then there is hope. If you have done a regular backup lately, then just restore the files. If none of the above, then there is not much hope. If you know a lot about the structure and layout of the storage system on the Atari, then you may be able to recover the data MANUALLY. Also, there are 2 FATs on each disk/partition. If you did not wipe out BOTH FATs, then you may be able to recover the first FAT by using a disk editor and copying each sector of the second FAT to each sector of the first FAT. Other may know of utilities that will help. Since this has happened once, ther may be a chance of it happening again unless you learned your lesson in what not to do. Either way, there is a program in the library (and commercial programs) that allow you to backup your Boot sector, FAT sectors and directories. The one in the library is called STMIRROR.??? or something like that. The commercial program is called Diamond Edge and is very nice. Are you sure you erased your FAT and not your boot sector? One last thing, go ahead and try to make an IMAGE backup of the partition, there may be a way to do it but, if something goes wrong, you will have a backup that you can restore and try again with. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 122 Wed Feb 09, 1994 P.GRIFFITH2 [PGRIF] at 03:23 EST I once managed to restore a FAT on a 49 meg hard drive with Cleanup from ICD. I ran it from floppy and chose the SAVE/REBUILD option. It has a FIX PARTITION INFO and I tried that. It took about twenty minutes but I got everything but my Spectre partition info back. Good luck. Paul ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 123 Wed Feb 09, 1994 BRIAN.H [ST~SysOp] at 17:17 EST Charlie >John, it depends on how fragmented or not your data was. Diamond >Back's medic utilities I think you mean Diamond Edge. ~~Brian..Written on Wednesday 13 April 1994 at 06:16 p.m. ADT ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 124 Wed Feb 09, 1994 M.TROUPE [Helium] at 21:43 EST Wayne Watson, If you only erased the first FAT then HDBlitz (available in the library) will toggle the FATs and allow the use of the second FAT. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 125 Wed Feb 09, 1994 J.ANTHONY [John Anthony] at 22:56 EST Wayne, Yes, I am sure I wiped out both FAT tables and not the boot or partition sectors. The directory and data sectors are all there. No backups, or else I wouldn't be asking for help here. :) Before I here more about backing up, backups are great and I have backed up my critical partitions, but I just can't justify backing up everything. Backing up a 60 meg partition would take almost 80 DSDD floppy disks and would take forever. Unfortunately, I don't know that much about the Atari ST disk format. I used to know the Atari 8-bit disk structure OK and restored some files manually. I just don't know much about the ST structure. Know any sources? Charlie, Yeah, I figured you were talking about Diamond Edge. Anyone know for sure if it will help me out? Maybe I should go over to Oregon Research Topic. To the person who mentioned Cleanup ST, I think you must have meant that you restored your partition info and not the FAT table. Cleanup ST only does the first one. I don't believe that the partition was fragmented much at all. Maybe there is some hope. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 126 Thu Feb 10, 1994 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 08:05 EST John A., 60 megs! I'd love to back that one up. I'm still in the middle of a 256-meg backup, with four more same-size backups to go. (I know, I need a tape drive....) Al ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 127 Thu Feb 10, 1994 J.BRENNER1 [See Flat] at 19:28 EST Al, I was curious about this when you first mentioned it but did not ask. Now I can't resist. Having (I believe you mentioned 2) Syquest drives, why in the heck are you doing this Back up to floppy? Having just installed a Syquest, I am about to wipe all back up disks I had. And that's only about 40! :-) John B. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 128 Thu Feb 10, 1994 R.BURROWS1 [Roger@Anodyn] at 20:58 EST J.ANTHONY, If you erased both FATs, either a backup or a miracle is what's needed. If the second FAT still exists, you may be able to recover. Several of the hard disk utility programs can copy the 2nd FAT back to the first ... I also wrote an [unwarranteed!] program to do that called FATCHECK. If you can't find anything else, you could try that (if it's not up on GEnie, leave a msg & I'll upload it). Before you get too excited though, I suspect that both FATs are gone (it just always seems to happen that way). Good luck, Roger P.S. If the files are _really_ valuable, some of the aforementioned hard disk utility programs can help you rebuild them sector by sector, but that gets difficult/impossible if you have non-text files and/or a highly fragmented disk. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 129 Thu Feb 10, 1994 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 22:28 EST Flat, Because I want one good set of floppy backups of 1200 megs of stuff. Yes, I do have 2 SyQuests, and 1 Floptical, and a network that lets me backup to the ST's file system. But I don't trust single-set backups, and I have a LOT of floppies here. Al ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 130 Mon Feb 14, 1994 C.UNDERWOOD1 [Carson] at 09:40 EST Do you guys think $100 is a good price for a used 20 meg Supra hard drive? A buddy of mine is dumping all of his Amiga stuff. The drive only saw occasional weekend use (all he did was play games on his Amiga). Thanks, Carson ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 131 Mon Feb 14, 1994 K.ESTES [Kenne@SFRT] at 16:17 EST No. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 132 Mon Feb 14, 1994 DAEDWARDS [Warrl] at 21:32 EST Carson: >Do you guys think $100 is a good price for a used 20 meg Supra hard >drive? As a baseline, use $2.50 per megabyte. That's at small capacity; by the time you get up over 500 meg, you should be down to $1 per megabyte. This is for *new* drives. Now discount for used equipment. Personally, I think the guy should be quite pleased to get $25 for that drive, as a separate drive. It is more valuable as a component of a complete system (including software). Also, are you *certain* that you have a controller which will let you use that drive? In my own case (i.e. plain vanilla Atari spec stuff) there are SCSI drives, and paperweights. I hear that *some* drive controllers for STs can handle other drives, but not all -- and I don't know what Amigas use. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 133 Mon Feb 14, 1994 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 22:17 EST To me, $100 for 20 meg is too much. I would offer him $50 at most. You could take that $100 and add another 100 or therabouts and get 100 meg. or more. The only thing you would end up with is the drive and the case (if it's in a case). The interface card (if it has one) would not be any good for the Atari. The case and power supply might be worth $50. Those suckers are unbelievably high priced new. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 134 Tue Feb 15, 1994 C.UNDERWOOD1 [Carson] at 09:42 EST Well guys, you gave me a lot to think about. You're going to die when you hear what he originally paid for the thing.......$400!!! This was a few years ago, but still! We had arrived at the $100 price because Toad advertises a 20 meg drive for $150 new. I thought the drive would work on my Atari because in past messages I've seen other users refer to their 20 meg Supras. I currently have a Floptical hooked up to my STe via "The Link". I assumed I could hook up the Supra to Floptical, daisy chaining is what I believe you would call it. I'm still very ignorant about hard drives so please correct me if I'm wrong. My buddy also gave me a 1084 monitor & his external 3.5" drive. Maybe I'll consider it (20 meg Supra, monitor, & external drive) a package deal for $100. Also if any of you have the time, check out the message I left in the "Non- Atari 3 1/2 Drives" topic. I'm still trying to figure out if it (the 3.5 drive) will work with my STe or if I should just sell it over in the Amiga RT. Thanks, Carson ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 135 Tue Feb 15, 1994 J.WILES1 [Jeff] at 22:18 EST I wasn't sure where to put this so here goes. With so many Atari owners also using DOS machines, hopefully someone can help me here. My brother has a Wang, IBM compatible, computer and bought a CD rom drive for it. I removed his A drive (5.25) and installed the CD Rom in its place since the B drive (3.5) slot was not large enough. Everything is working just fine except for one thing. When booting the system, I get the following error: The system configuration is not correct. Run Setup. Press F1 to continue. Pressing F1 lets me continue on to windows and everything seems fine. Going to Setup, I have changed the A drive to *non existant* but that doesn't do away with the error message. Setup is also used to set up the D:\ drive but there are no options for CDROM just Harddrives. My question is, are there some kind of dip switches inside the computer that I have to change in order for the computer to know that the A drive is not there? If that's not the problem, maybe it's the configuration not knowing about the CDROM as D:\ . If so, how do you use the Setup utility for a CDROM? I know there has to be a simple solution to this problem but I'm not sure where to start looking. PS: If the Sysops would rather have answers to this in Email, that is fine. PPS: Al, your message came garbled so if you have an answer, try me again. Any help would be appreciated, Jeff ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 136 Wed Feb 16, 1994 J.MEEHAN3 [>> Joe M << ] at 04:49 EST Message 135 Tue Feb 15, 1994 J.WILES1 [Jeff] Jeff, There must be a Drive A. Set up the 3.5 Drive as Drive A. The set up for the CD-ROM may vary depending on the hardware/software, there should be something with the drive to help you. Other than that I suggest you stop by one of the DOS RoundTables for additional help. >> Joe M << ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 137 Sat Feb 19, 1994 B.CONNOLLY1 [Bud] at 09:13 EST I purchased a Mega STe Internal Host Adapter and a Maxtor 7245S SCSI hard drive. To make a long story short, I could never get the drive to be recognized by the host adapter. I sent them back to the dealer and he now tells me that the host adapter will not work with larger hard drives. Is there some rule of thumb for which hard drives will work with the Mega STe Internal Host Adapter? thanx Bud ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 138 Sat Feb 19, 1994 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 12:12 EST Bud, The internal HA could care less about the size of the HD. It does require that you have parity disabled though on the drive. Maybe this is what you had dificulty with. The dealer should know about this. Believe me, it works fine with large HDs. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 139 Sat Feb 19, 1994 J.ANTHONY [John Anthony] at 17:59 EST Bud, I also have a MegaSTe and tried to install a Maxtor 7245S in the internal harddirve bay and had no luck getting it to run. Tom Harker from ICD told me he thought there might be some type of timing problem between the Maxtor and the Atari host adapter. Strange thing was that I could get an old 30 meg Seagate to work fine with the MegaSTe. I was using the same version of ICD booter as you. ICD just recently released another update, version 6.4.3, I think. Anyway it doesn't help the problem either. While I was fooling around with all different combinations of jumpers on the Maxtor drive and the host adapter, I did have a small success. I hooked up the Maxtor to the internal Atari host adapter, but didn't hook up to the internal power supply. I then booted up from a floppy. Then I hooked to the internal power supply and ran the ICD booter from the floppy and low and behold the Maxtor was recognized and worked like a champ. Of course it still wouldn't boot up from the Maxtor so it still is a big disappointment. Maybe that experience will clue someone as to what can be done. PLEASE drop me a line if you get the Maxtor to work. Oh yeah, right now the Maxtor is working fine in my external hard drive case with ICD host adapter and software. Real fine drive. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 140 Sat Feb 19, 1994 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 20:11 EST I have installed a Maxtor LXT-7213S to the internal HA and ICD software and haven't had a problem. I had to disable parity. The newer ICD HA are not affected by parity like the older ones and the Atari HA is. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 141 Sun Feb 20, 1994 MUSE [Tomas] at 03:02 EST Hi folks, A friend has asked me to inquire about Atari's SH204 hard drive. Will it autoboot and what version of Atari's drivers will work with a TOS 1.0 machine? ===Tomas=== ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 142 Sun Feb 20, 1994 BRIAN.H [ST~SysOp] at 08:45 EST Well Tomas as you already know he/she upgrade to at least TOS 1.4 for HD safety. Also, according to the instructions with the second last version from ATARI, it will work with TOS 1.0 but again they recommend upgrading. I have heard that the Codeheads has an excellent upgrade path {grin}. ~~Brian..Written on Sunday 20 February 1994 at 09:44 a.m. ADT ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 143 Sun Feb 20, 1994 MUSE [Tomas] at 16:37 EST Brian, I had the drive auto-booting from a TOS 2.06 machine with HDX v 4.xx, but when I moved it to her machine it would only boot from the floppy. I've found version 5 here in the libs. but nothing older. Have the older versions been removed? BTW, CodeHead's TEC is no longer made. We only have a couple of Mega Bus versions left. The chips and the manual are still available. ===Tomas=== ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 144 Sun Feb 20, 1994 M.TROUPE [Helium] at 16:44 EST Tomas, Is that the 20 Meg version? If so, then yes it will autoboot with TOS 1.00. I have used the AHDI, SUPRA, and now ICD utilities. I like the ICD ones best. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 145 Sun Feb 20, 1994 DAEDWARDS [Warrl] at 18:04 EST Early versions of TOS don't wait for the hard drive to get up to speed. So you can't power up your system and immediately boot from the hard drive. However, you can power up your system and boot from a floppy which contains a certain program in the AUTO folder. (I got the program from the library, but unfortunately no longer have it and don't recall the name.) This program would wait about 3 seconds -- a parameter I believe -- and then reboot the system. This was enough delay to permit the hard drive to get up to speed, and the system would then boot from the hard drive. Note: NO hard-disk drivers on the floppy. This worked with TOS 1.00. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 146 Sun Feb 20, 1994 MUSE [Tomas] at 19:55 EST Helium, Yes, it is the 20 megger. This gal is on a budget and I need to figure out how to get it to auto boot with Atari's software. If there are no known problems, I'll just have to give it another go. Warrl, Thanks, I know about that. ===Tomas=== ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 147 Mon Feb 21, 1994 B.SEMAAN [BOSEM] at 01:50 EST Tomas, The last version of HDX that I used on TOS 1.0 was 3.xx, but that does not mean HDX 4 or 5 won't work. Try them, but remember to keep partitions at less than 16 megs. Also you can't mix different versions of Atari's HD software. So make sure the driver (AHDI or SHDRIVER.SYS) and utils (HDX,HINSTALL) match versions. There may be certain combinations that work together, but there are definitely incompatibilities between some versions. Also you have to either use a prg like HDWAIT, BOOTYME, etc. or else turn on the SH204 and wait until the LED stops flashing (about 10-15 sec) before turning on the ST. Or else the cpu won't see the HD and will boot from floppy as if there were no HD attached. This is true even if you are not autobooting the HD, by the way. If you still have problems, post what you're doing and what happens. I'm sure we can get it going. I used TOS 1.0 and autobooted my SH204 for several years. Bob ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 148 Mon Feb 21, 1994 MUSE [Tomas] at 02:36 EST Bosen, Thanks for the tips. Do you know where I can find that version of HDX? ===Tomas=== ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 149 Mon Feb 21, 1994 B.SEMAAN [BOSEM] at 03:23 EST Tomas, Try file #11062 in the libs. IF that one doesn't work then try #21008 Bob ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 150 Mon Feb 21, 1994 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 07:36 EST Carson, Many moons ago, I paid $900 for a 20-meg drive. Al Jeff, Sorry for the garble. I promise never to read and respond to messages again while using a PC notebook! What Joe said is correct. Some newer BIOS settings actually allow you to work without an A: drive, but the Wang isn't in that group. Al ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 151 Mon Feb 21, 1994 M.TROUPE [Helium] at 18:18 EST Tomas, Make sure she has the busy light out before she starts up the computer. If she doesn't then it will not boot. Found that out several times. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 152 Tue Feb 22, 1994 MUSE [Tomas] at 04:22 EST Helium, Hmmm. There's a thought. I don't think I even looked at the lights much. We had it turned sideways. I made sure I had the drive all powered up though. I've used hard drives for a while. I've just never used the Atari drivers. I think I've figured out what to do. Thanks everyone. ===Tomas=== ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 153 Tue Feb 22, 1994 RANA at 22:03 EST I have a Maxtor 7120 SCSI hard drive from Toad Computers. I would now like to connect this drive to a Macintosh rather than my ST. I have 25-pin to 50-pin external SCSI cable, and I was expecting the 50-pin (centronics-style) end to fit into the Maxtor's connector. Unfortunately, the Maxtor has a male-type connector with 50-pins sticking up. Do I need a different SCSI cable? Am I attempting the wrong thing? ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 154 Wed Feb 23, 1994 B.SEMAAN [BOSEM] at 02:22 EST RANA, Call Maxtor at 1-800-2MAXTOR. They have a recorded information line with step by step installation and setup for Mac and IBM computers. Bob ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 155 Wed Feb 23, 1994 C.UNDERWOOD1 [Carson] at 08:59 EST I currently have a "Floptical only" system. I bought my Floptical at ATY Computer in Oakland, CA. It is an Insite drive housed in a case that is almost as wide as the base of the SM124 monitor it sits under. It also has a fan. I would like to add a hard drive to the case but, this is new territory for me. Can I do it myself? When I buy it, do I buy the "mech" only? Any suggestions/help/comments would be appreciated. Carson ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 156 Wed Feb 23, 1994 ARCHIVIST [Charlie] at 20:23 EST Carson, I would say you probably can. If you want to check first, open up the case and make sure there is a mounting bracket inside for the extra drive or not, as well as a Y-cable for the drive (should be a wide, grey ribbon cable), and another power connecter. You could also write ATY here on GEnie and ask them if the cases they suplied their Floptical's in come ready to add another drive. Charlie/sysop ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 157 Wed Feb 23, 1994 L.BUDNICK [Lorne] at 22:12 EST Suggestions?? I am planning to add an additional hard drive. I will be looking for something in the 270 to 340 meg range. I remember some discussion about certain drives not working appropriately with the Atari system. Before I go ahead and select a product I thought I would seek out recommendations that anyone might have, and any words of wisdom regarding specific devices that will not work appropriately with the Atari system. BTW, I am running a TT030 and I'm simply looking to add a mechanism to my external SyQuest case. Any suggestions along these lines would be greatly appreciated. Lorne.... ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 158 Thu Feb 24, 1994 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 03:22 EST Carson, I take it you are using a Link for the SCSI host adaptor? If so, you can add up to five more SCSI devices by daisy-chaining them. Each one has to have a unique SCSI ID, which is some cases (the Iomega Floptical, for example) involves setting a switch, and in others requires moving some jumpers that rest in pins. Yes, you just buy a SCSI drive mechanism. I'd say you could get a SCSI drive out of some of the used drives that are advertised here, without spending much. Al ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 159 Thu Feb 24, 1994 C.UNDERWOOD1 [Carson] at 08:36 EST Anyone, Have you heard of Conner hard drives? It is a SCSI drive, but I've never heard of that brand. Charlie, Thanks for the info. I did E-Mail Alex but, he's so busy it usually takes him a while to respond. It's nice to know there is an Atari dealer that has that problem. :) Al, Yes, I'm using a Link. Thanks for reminding me about the unique SCSI ID. I'm off to check out the "For Sale" topics. Carson ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 160 Thu Feb 24, 1994 TQUINN [Terry~Sysop] at 10:00 EST Carson - Connor has been around for quite a long time (computer-wise that is) and produces excellent SCSI drives. Terry Quinn ST RT Sysop and BBS Janitor ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 161 Thu Feb 24, 1994 ICDINC [Tom] at 11:39 EST Carson, BEware of Conner drives with the Link. Many of them do not support disable parity. This is required with The Link. Other than that, they are good quality drives. - TOM - ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 162 Thu Feb 24, 1994 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 21:34 EST Conner is a widely admired brand, Carson. Others may know of specific models that work better than others, but I do know that Conner is the inventor of the submini drive. Al ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 163 Fri Feb 25, 1994 C.UNDERWOOD1 [Carson] at 09:42 EST Tom, Thanks for warning. Any other brands of HD's that do not support disable parity? I like to be an informed shopper. Since I do use the Link, I think I'll steer clear of that Conner HD I was looking at. I don't want to risk incompatability. Terry & Al, Thanks for the comments. Carson ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 164 Fri Feb 25, 1994 ICDINC [Tom] at 10:51 EST I think WD (Western Digital) has a few models that do not allow you to disable parity as well. And Quantum allows it but it is tricky on an ELS model drive. All other Quantum models are OK. - TOM - ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 165 Fri Feb 25, 1994 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 20:06 EST Lorne, The only thing you really have to make sure of is to get a drive that allows you to disable parity. Other than that, I don't believe there is much else to worry about. I would suggest Micropolis, Maxtor or Quantum. These are the 3 top selling (large HD) units. They are also the 3 of the best. After so MANY problems with Seagate, I wouldn't buy another one. I know that the high capacity Maxtor and Quantum drives are designed to be used in network/servers, etc. and are designed to be on all the time. They are built to last. Conners are ok but a lot of their drives do not allow you to disable parity. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 167 Fri Feb 25, 1994 R.NELSON48 [Grouch (:{] at 23:46 EST I recently purchased some syquest 44 meg carts for $59.00 from NCA. Along with my invoice came a list of Manufactures Tech Support phone numbers. This looks like it could be a very handy list to have around. HARD DRIVES............................TECH Support Conner ................................ 408 433-3340 800 4-CONNER DEC ................................... 508 493-5111 Fujitsu ............................... 800 826-6112 Hewlett-Packard ....................... 800 752-0900 Hitachi ............................... 408 773-8833 Maxtor ................................ 800 262-9867 408 432-5333 Micropolis ............................ 800 709-3325 Quantum ............................... 408 894-4000 900 740-4433 Seagate ............................... 800 468-3472 408 438-8222 Toshiba ............................... 800 334-3445 Western Digital ....................... 800 832-4778 REMOVABLES Syquest ............................... 510 226-4000 There were also numbers for Controllers, Opticals, FAX/MODEM, CD ROMS, Tape BAck-up, etc. If anyone asks, I'll transcribe the list and upload it as a file for the library. (:{ Grouch. ps - This message posted previously in bad format, forgot the all important two leading spaces so that GEnie would not reformat my text. Sorry all, and a tip of the Grouch FAX/MODEM to ST.LOU for pointing out my sloppy ways. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 168 Sat Feb 26, 1994 D.CRANO [Big D] at 01:00 EST Bud, This is Don Crano again... I have found from several sources that the Maxtor 7245s and the 7345s will not work with the MegaSTe host period... Beleive me I tried both the drive you had and another 7245s here on my MegaSTe and no luck... They will both work fine with the ICD AdSCSI or Link though... I put out a feeler on the networks about the problem, and got several replies stating that both the 7245 and 7345 will not work on the internal host, there indeed seems to be some kind of timing error between them and the internal host... I did have some luck with the 7245s.. I had to boot from floppy and use ICD software, but about 1 out of 20 relogs I could gett the drive to be recognized, but that was about it.... There is no problem with the size of the drive in the MegaSTe. I do not know why Len would have told you that, unless he got confused when I said those two Maxtors would not work... By the way the MegaSTe host you had does work fine with my Maxtor 7120s and 7080s so it just appears to be the the 245meg and 345meg that are a problem... I know how you feel and also Len, I could not understand what was going on either till I found out about those two drives.. I really had me going, because it they would work with the ICD hosts and Link but not the Atari host.... Who knows, but that is the problem.... I would suggest, if you really want the Maxtor 7245s, then go external with it via ICD host or Link.. Or else settle for another drive Maxtor or other wise to run internal.... If I can help you futher, just let me know.... Don ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 169 Sat Feb 26, 1994 J.MORRISON38 [~ Jimmo ~] at 02:01 EST Grouch... THANX for the HD info... your second version was much easier to read :-), (and I think you only need ONE space at the beginning of a line to ensure that GENIE won't do its reformat thing)... ... Can anyone give me a full mailing address for Syquest (and/or fax/phone numbers), as my brother-in-law bought a 105-removable and got diddly (sp?) for documentation. ~ Jimmo ~ ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 170 Sat Feb 26, 1994 JIM.K [Jim~ST Sysop] at 09:31 EST Grouch, By all means, upload those numbers! My CardFile .DAT file always can always use some numbers. Jim Kudron 26Feb94 09:12:42 ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 171 Sat Feb 26, 1994 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 09:38 EST Carson, I'm formatting your Flopticals to 21 megs, all one partition. If that's OK, let me know. The first one I formatted was divided into two partitions previously, and I want to make sure that's not what you want. (Which TOS version do you have?) Al ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 172 Sat Feb 26, 1994 ST.LOU [Lou Rocha] at 10:31 EST Grouch, you are welcome. Your effort here is greatly appreciated. I have already uploaded a library file with these phone numbers. I am sure everyone would appreciate seeing those other phone numbers too. I wonder if anyone is interested in compiling a telephone directory of all things related to Atari hardware and software? Has this been done already? ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 173 Sat Feb 26, 1994 C.UNDERWOOD1 [Carson] at 11:18 EST Al, 1 partition is fine. I have TOS 1.62. Carson ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 174 Sat Feb 26, 1994 L.BUDNICK [Lorne] at 13:04 EST Wayne, Thanks for the response. I was mostly concerned about the parity issue that I knew had been mentioned here in the past. I just couldn't remember which drives had that problem. At this time I am leaning toward purchasing another Quantum. I currently have an LPS105 and have been very happy with its performance. I Just wanted to make sure there were no problems being reported regarding the higher capacity drives. Grouch, Ditto the thanks for your list! Lorne.... ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 175 Sat Feb 26, 1994 J.BRENNER1 [See Flat] at 14:25 EST Lou, I have a Shareware database written my Bill Aycock. It came with an Atari Vendors (dealers) database. When someone gives me a number, such as you..(global drives) or Grouch's list, I add it to the base. I currenctly have 130 entries. John B. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 176 Sat Feb 26, 1994 R.NELSON48 [Grouch (:{] at 14:37 EST Jimmo - SyQuest Technology, Inc. Fremont, CA 94538 Telephone (510) 226-4000 (:{ Grouch. Jim~ST Sysop These are for you: CONTROLLERS TECH SUPPORT ------------------------------------------------- Adeptec ............................ 408 985-8600 DTC ................................ 408 262-7700 Always Technology .................. 818 597-9595 Future Domain ...................... 714 253-0400 Kodiak ............................. 800 777-7704 Promise Technology ................. 408 452-0984 Trantor............................. 510 770-1400 Ultrastor .......................... 510 623-8955 FAX/MODEM US Robotics ............. 800 982-0823 CD ROMS TECH SUPPORT ------------------------------------------------- Creative labs ...................... 408 428-6622 Media Vision ....................... 800 638-2807 NCL ................................ 408 734-1006 NEC ................................ 508 264-4300 Pioneer ............................ 408 988-1702 Sony ............................... 800 222-7669 Texel .............................. 408 980-1838 Toshiba ............................ 800 999-4273 (CD ROM) ............................ 714 455-0407 (CD ROM Drivers) FLOPPY DRIVES Teac ................ 213 726-0303 ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 177 Sat Feb 26, 1994 ST.LOU [Lou Rocha] at 14:38 EST JB, can you save out an ASCII version and upload it to the library? ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 178 Sat Feb 26, 1994 J.BRENNER1 [See Flat] at 17:12 EST Lou, I saved my ADB file as ASCII. I have deleted a few entries as they were not relevent. (some were lists of CIS addresses). The list is in alphabetical order. So some searching is neccessary to find something. Of course when it's in teh data base it's a key word away....:-) I will call the file VENDORS.ZIP and it should be uploaded in this pass. John B. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 179 Sat Feb 26, 1994 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 18:01 EST OK, Carson, then I'll do the other two the same way. Gadzooks, it takes eons to do a real format of a floptical, but I'm doing it that way to make sure they are OK. Looks like they got messed up somehow. (One of them had only 10 megs of usable space!). Al ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 180 Sat Feb 26, 1994 E.SAKARA1 at 18:43 EST I'm hoping someone can give me some advice on upgrading my hardrive. My computer is a 2meg 520STFM with TOS1.4 and the hardrive is an external with ICD host adapter, ADAPTEC 4070 controller and a KALOK 32 meg RLL drive. I have gotten a good deal on a QUANTUM 45 meg SCSI drive and I want to add it into my external case. I have the room and the power connection but I'm not sure of some of the details. Main questions are: a) Can I combine the RLL drive and SCSI drive? b) where do I remove terminating resistors? I know that only the last device needs the terminator strips but how do you classify 'device'? i.e. do I remove them from the ICD HA, the ADAPTEC controller or the KALOK drive? (assuming I add the Quantum as the last device on the 50 pin SCSI cable). c) up-topic I have seen comments about 'enabling/disabling parity' on some drives. My Quantum has a jumper labelled EP with the shorting block installed. Do I need the jumper installed or removed? I'm not clear on what I need based on the earlier comments. thanks for any help Eric Sakara ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 181 Sat Feb 26, 1994 D.WALTER7 [Doug Walter] at 18:49 EST Jim and Grouch, Thanks for uploading the tech support lists. Will save me much time :-) Doug7 ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 182 Sat Feb 26, 1994 BRIAN.H [ST~SysOp] at 20:43 EST Now if someone will place all these numbers into CARDFILE it will save me the work {grin}. ~~Brian..Written on Saturday 26 February 1994 at 09:26 p.m. ADT ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 183 Sat Feb 26, 1994 B.CONNOLLY1 [Bud] at 22:12 EST Don Crano, Thanx for all of your help in tracking down the problem with the 7245S. I got a message from Wayne Watson stating that he has a Maxtor 7213S working in his Mega STe. Graham Norton @ Falcon Systems says that a Quantum LPS240S works as well. So you are right about the Maxtor 7245S and 7345S being just a couple of 'oddballs'. I'll have to call Len about the Quantum, and hopefully, get something working here soon. Bud ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 184 Sun Feb 27, 1994 C.UNDERWOOD1 [Carson] at 11:06 EST Al, Meet me in the Flopticals topic. Carson ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 185 Sun Feb 27, 1994 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 11:50 EST Eric, You will need to remove the terminating resistors from the middle SCSI device. The 2 SCSI devices would be the Quantum drive and the Adaptec controller. You will need to remove the jumper that is on the pins labeled EP. The 2 should work together fine. Some drives don't like it when you remove their terminating resistors though so keep it in mind if things don't seem to be working right. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 186 Sun Feb 27, 1994 B.CONNOLLY1 [Bud] at 12:39 EST E.SAKARA1 >I'm hoping someone can give me some advice on upgrading my hardrive. > >My computer is a 2meg 520STFM with TOS1.4 and the hardrive is an external with >ICD host adapter, ADAPTEC 4070 controller and a KALOK 32 meg RLL drive. > >I have gotten a good deal on a QUANTUM 45 meg SCSI drive and I want to add it >into my external case. I have the room and the power connection but I'm not >sure of some of the details. > > Main questions are: > > a) Can I combine the RLL drive and SCSI drive? Not exactly, the SCSI drive will need it's own host adapter. Most likely an ICD ADSCSI or ADSCSI +. (I think the only difference in the + is a clock.) > b) where do I remove terminating resistors? I know that only the last >device needs the terminator strips but how do you classify 'device'? i.e. do >I remove them from the ICD HA, the ADAPTEC controller or the KALOK drive? >(assuming I add the Quantum as the last device on the 50 pin SCSI cable). Since the SCSI drive will essentially be in its own 'chain', I don't beleive that you should remove the terminating resistors. > c) up-topic I have seen comments about 'enabling/disabling parity' on some >drives. My Quantum has a jumper labelled EP with the shorting block >installed. Do I need the jumper installed or removed? I'm not clear on what >I need based on the earlier comments. You probably want to remove that jumper, but, call Quantum Technical Support @ 408-894-4000 to be sure. Bud ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 187 Sun Feb 27, 1994 ICDINC [Tom] at 15:00 EST Actually Bud you can run an embedded SCSI drive on the same host adapter as an Adaptec or Omti controller. The controller is just a SCSI device with an ID and terminating resistors. It can go anywhere on the chain. - TOM - ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 188 Sun Feb 27, 1994 E.SAKARA1 at 15:24 EST Thanks Wayne - that did the trick. I knew in general what needed doing but it's nice to double check stuff It sure is nice to be able to ask a question on Sat night, get the answer and have a new hard disk installed by noon Sunday. thanks for the help eric ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 189 Sun Feb 27, 1994 E.SAKARA1 at 15:31 EST TOM and BUD thanks for answering but as in my previous note, I just did it the way WAYNE suggested and it worked fine. I ended up twisting the scsi cable into a real mess but I ended up with the Quantum in the middle (with no resistors) and the ADAPTEC controller on the end. Previously I had been using two RLL drives off the ADAPTEC controller and that worked fine. One of the drives was a swap meet special that gave me lots of errors. That's why when I found a SCSI drive real cheap, I wanted to try that instead. Same result but different cables and different resistor packs removed. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 190 Tue Mar 01, 1994 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 00:34 EST Eric, No prob. Glad I could help. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 191 Sat Mar 05, 1994 B.CONNOLLY1 [Bud] at 17:04 EST Tom @ICD I stand corrected. I did have a SCSI drive in one shoebox case daisychained after a Megafile 30 at one time, so I know that can be done. I just thought he wanted to put the SCSI drive into the Megafile case. I didn't think that would work, unless he put in a separate host adapter and beefed up the power supply. Also, how many devices can be attached to an ADSCSI+ host? A friend of mine has a 95MB Seagate and a Syquest 44MB and would like to add another 95MB Seagate. Can he just add another connector to the 50 conductor ribbon cable, add power and go? Bud ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 192 Sun Mar 06, 1994 ICDINC [Tom] at 00:51 EST Bud, That message was a long time ago and maybe we both missed something. In theory you can hook 7 SCSI devices to an AdSCSI Plus ST host adapter. In practice, 3 or 4 should work, more than that may work. It comes down to the magic of SCSI bus noise and proper termination. Yes, just add another connector, power, remove resistor packs in the drive, set the ID to a unique number and go. Good luck. - TOM - ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 193 Sun Mar 06, 1994 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 01:08 EST Bud, 6 devices can be connected. It's a standard SCSI adaptor. Al ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 194 Sun Mar 06, 1994 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 03:26 EST Tom, In theory and in practice, you can attach six, not seven, devices to a SCSI HA. The host unit itself owns one of the SCSI IDs. It's correct to think of attaching seven devices to the SCSI bus, but the HA is connected to one of the IDs on that bus. Al ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 195 Sun Mar 06, 1994 ICDINC [Tom] at 09:06 EST Al, What device number is the host then? I believe our Amiga SCSI host adapters work that way but on the Atari, I think all SCSI ID numbers are useable. We reserved ID #6 for the clock in all our host adapters except The Link which supports 8 (0-7). I believe that PC host adapters and Mac SCSI also only allow 7 devices. Prove me wrong. :-) - TOM - ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 196 Sun Mar 06, 1994 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 21:37 EST Tom, Hmm, that's how I've been setting up SCSIs for years -- seven available IDs. Boy, would I like to be wrong, since it would free up an address. I've just looked in one of my SCSI manuals (PC, but a good impelentation) and it confirms what I said at least as far as the typical PC installation is concerned. I'm sure I misstated the number, BTW. It's eight minus one, not seven minus one. I need to go back to math class. :) The next time I am running one of your utils, I'll see what it counts. I know about the reserved address for the clock, except for the Link. Al ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 197 Sun Mar 06, 1994 R.BURROWS1 [Roger@Anodyn] at 22:26 EST Al & Tom, You're both right (but Tom is more right!). The SCSI-1 bus supports a maximum of 8 addresses (0-7). If you implement full SCSI functionality (including disconnect), everything needs an address including the host adapter; the host adapter is normally at address 7 (highest priority if I remember right). However, if you don't support disconnect, nothing ever needs to address the host, so it can get away without having an address. Regards, Roger Burrows P.S. The above is from memory ... the host might also need an address for other SCSI features. ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 198 Sun Mar 06, 1994 C.UNDERWOOD1 [Carson] at 22:52 EST A buddy of mine gave me all of his Amiga stuff. His 500 was acting up on him & every time he had it checked out, they told him there was nothing wrong with it. If I can use some of the stuff, I'll be sliding him some cash. Anyway one of the things I recieved was a Supra Drive 500XP. It is a 20 meg hard drive, at least that's all I thought it was when he told me about it. It turns out it is a whole lot more. The drive part of it is a Seagate 325N. It is housed in a case that attaches to the Amiga on the left side of the keyboard. I believe it is called a Bus Pass-Through. The port itself is about 2-3 inches long. It also has a place to hold DRAM (chips?), up to 8 megs worth. Now if I may dream a little bit. Wouldn't it be great if I could somehow attach this drive to my STe & access its "Fast Expansion RAM"? Short of taking out the drive mech & adding it to my floptical, can anyone think of other ways I can use this 500XP or have any experience with one of these drives? Carson ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 199 Sun Mar 06, 1994 ICDINC [Tom] at 23:22 EST Carson, Perhaps trading the Amiga drive for some Atari equipment. :-) Sorry but they are quite a bit different. - TOM - ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 200 Sun Mar 06, 1994 C.UNDERWOOD1 [Carson] at 23:52 EST Tom, Alas, I suspected I was dreaming. Thanks for waking me up. :) A clairification, if you will. Can I take out the Seagate drive & use it with my STe? Carson ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 201 Sun Mar 06, 1994 Y.DUFRESNE [Papageno] at 23:54 EST I'm having a strange problem with my SCSI chain. I have an internal Maxtor 7120 in a TT. I want to hook a Syquest and a scanner via the TT's SCSI port. I can access the scanner or the Syquest seperatly but the system crashes very badly if both are present. The internal is at ID0, the scanner at ID6 and the Syquest at ID1, all as supposed. I'm getting to believ it's the C50-C50 cable that is the culprit. After trying everithing else I could think of, I tested the cable and discovered that a number of pins were not wired. Is this normal?? Here is a list of the unwired pins: 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40 and 42. The strangest thing is that if I hook both the Syquest and the scanner with an ICD Link, the bot get recognized. The problem is that I need the Link for the MSTe and that the Scanner software does not work if the scanner is not in the TT's SCSI chain. Please, HELP!! Yanick @ CGA ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 202 Mon Mar 07, 1994 D.CRANO [Big D] at 00:30 EST Al Tom and all.. Hmmm well running a BBS plus my own system I have at one time or another have used all the SCSI ids.. This was done using multiple ICD hosts... If you remember the orginal hosts had the option of disabling the clock address... Thus using 3 hosts I have had scsi ids 0 through 7 in use at one time with no problems... At this time I have a two computers a MegaSTe with a 120meg internal as id 0 and a 245meg external as id 1. A 2meg 520 with 2 extenal hosts daisy chained, each with 2 drives per case, thus ids 0, 1 and 2, 3.. As Tom knows I just purchased a used ICD tape unit.. I move the tape unit, I have set the scsi id of it to id 7.. I have no problems moving this from computer to computer. From all this I would say you can have access to all 8 scsi ids, except for the hosts with a clock that can not be disabled.. I should say atleast with 3 hosts, I do not know if this can be done all on one host as the load and noise could be a problem.... As for the original hosts with a jumper that could be removed or cut to remove the clock address, it might be possible to do the same on the AdScsi+ host also.. There is just no marked jumper, but it might be possible to disable it via a trace cut...... I found it intersesting that I could daisy chain 3 AdScsi+ hosts each with it's own clock all on the same id and not have any problems, but Tom explained that one to me... They will find the first clock on the id and egnore the rest. It works....... ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 203 Mon Mar 07, 1994 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 03:28 EST Roger, I'm glad Tom was righter ... it's his job to be! Restores my faith in ICD. (No, I never lost any faith in ICD. We're all lucky to have such a grand team there.) Al ------------ Category 4, Topic 39 Message 204 Mon Mar 07, 1994 ICDINC [Tom] at 08:58 EST Carson, SUre you can remove the mechanism and use it as you would any other embedded SCSI drive. - TOM - ------------