Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watmath!watdragon!dahlia!mdharding
From: mdharding@dahlia.waterloo.edu (Matthew D. Harding)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Hard drive/Controller
Message-ID: <14444@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Date: 13 Jun 89 14:08:06 GMT
Sender: daemon@watdragon.waterloo.edu
Reply-To: mdharding@dahlia.waterloo.edu (Matthew D. Harding)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 27

Well, I have to publicly thank the net for solving my seemingly insurmountable
problem. My hard drive / controller is now up and working fine, and all it
needed was a low-level format. Unfortunately, it was an original IBM (Xebec)
controller, and thus had no formatting program in the ROM itself (like 99% of
the people suggested). Anyway, a few people recommended disk utilities to me
and I wound up using Speedstor, a commercial program that I would recommend
to anyone. It is extremely versatile and very powerful, and had me up running
in about 10 minutes.

Why did I not do this right away you ask? Two reasons - 1) I had just taken a 
working hard drive and controller out of one machine, and transplanted it
into another machine, with _NO_ alteration of anything, and presto, low-level
format required. (Don't ask me why - it's an IBM controller, need I say more?)
2) I had the advanced diagnostics PC disk, but when I went to format a disk,
I realized I didn't want to format after all. Escape didn't work, and in 
response to the what drive? prompt, 9 didn't work. So what did I do? I typed 0,
hoping this would back me up one level, and in response to 0 it STARTED
FORMATTING MY A DRIVE (with the diagnostics disk in, of course). Boy oh boy.
Gotta love that.

Anyway, I received 37 responses in my mail, not counting the few that were
posted, and special thanks go to crowed@ece.orst.edu and davis@cs.unc.edu, who
were of extreme help. Once again, you have all confirmed my belief that the net
is the greatest exchange of information anywhere in the world. Thanks and
good night.

Cheers, Matt.