Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!seas.gwu.edu!fc159145 From: fc159145@seas.gwu.edu (William Lai) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware Subject: Help with ST-1144A IDE drive Message-ID: <2410@sparko.gwu.edu> Date: 6 Dec 90 17:30:37 GMT Reply-To: fc159145@seas.gwu.edu (William Lai) Organization: The George Washington University, Washington D.C. Lines: 83 I am having problem installing the IDE drive I purchased for my 386-33 machine. It is a Seagate ST-1144A IDE drive, and I am using it with a DTK PTI-215 IDE controller. The Bios on the 386 is AMI, dated 6-30-90. The setup is as follows: 386-33 clone VGA card IDE controller The IDE controller has a couple of jumpers, they are as follows: W1: "enable or disable the embedded hard disk drive", enabled W2: "used for old type hard disk such as Conner CP-342", set to normal operation (not old type) W3: "single or dual speed spindle motors for floppy drives, A standard AT drive normally uses the single speed spindle motor", set to single speed spindle motor. W4: "Different data rates result in different precompensation value. There are several possibilities obtained by setting jumber W4 as follows: One way: Data Rate (KB/sec) Precompensation (ns) --------------------------------------------------- 500 125 --------------------------------------------------- 250 125 300 125 --------------------------------------------------- 250 125 250 125 --------------------------------------------------- 1000 83 1000 83 --------------------------------------------------- Second way: Data Rate (KB/sec) Precompensation (ns) --------------------------------------------------- 500 125 --------------------------------------------------- 125 250 125 208 --------------------------------------------------- 125 250 125 250 --------------------------------------------------- 1000 83 1000 83 --------------------------------------------------- " (copied from DTK manual) Having no idea what W4 does, I tried it both ways. The BIOS support a couple drive type that corresponds with the Seagate manual, and I tried them all: Type Cynlinder Head Sectors Size (Meg) ---------------------------------------------------------- 9 900 15 17 112 45 917 15 17 114 47 1024 14 17 119 ^ |___User defined type Using DOS 3.3 (IBM), I was able to partition the drive into 2 partition, and formatted the first partition into 32 Meg successfully. However, when I tried to access it from command line, such as "dir c:", most of the times it just hangs up the whole machine. I have to do a hardware reset to restart the machine. If anyone has experience with this drive, I would appreciate it if you can lend me a hand! Thanks in advance. Regards, William Lai fc159145@seas.gwu.edu lai_wy%ncsd@gte.com