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From: wlsmith@valve.heart.rri.uwo.ca (Wayne Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: ST1144A (125 Mb IDE drive) questions...
Message-ID: <3138@ria.ccs.uwo.ca>
Date: 27 May 91 17:35:28 GMT
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Organization: The John P. Robarts Research Institute, London, Ontario
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Originator: wlsmith@valve.heart.rri.uwo.ca

Well, either my original posting didn't get through, or there are no 
IDE experts out there...

My original problem was that my ST1144A (125Mb IDE drive) wasn't recognized
by my system.  Now, when I entered the drive parameters into the CMOS config,
I can use the drive...BUT
The factory test paper that came with the drive says (among other things)

Sectors/Track 44 36 30

So which one is it?  Or is it laid out so there are more sectors on the
outside, and less on the inside radius (ie 3 zones) ?

I entered 30 Sec/Track in the config table, and get 109Mb formatted capacity.
No, Disk Manager software didn't come with the drive (shame on California
Microchip).  So, do IDE drives come with a driver of some sort?
How come there's no controller bios on IDE interfaces?  This makes IDE
not as flexible as, say, SCSI, where you can throw in a cheap $35 controller
card (that has its own bios!!!) and it can reside painlessly with other MFM
or RLL drives.  Any comments out there?...