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From: del@pilchuck.UUCP (Erik Lindberg)
Newsgroups: net.micro.pc
Subject: Re: Disk controller address
Message-ID: <444@pilchuck.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 19-Sep-86 20:56:24 EDT
Article-I.D.: pilchuck.444
Posted: Fri Sep 19 20:56:24 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 22-Sep-86 21:06:14 EDT
References: <2231@gitpyr.UUCP> <2242@gitpyr.UUCP>
Distribution: net
Organization: Data I/O - FutureNet Corp., Redmond, WA
Lines: 33
Summary: Did you FDISK?

In article <2242@gitpyr.UUCP>, ken@gitpyr.UUCP (Ken Hall) writes:
> I installed a Western Digital hard disk controller card into an IBM XT.
> 
> To get everything working I had to get into debug and run a program off the
> ROM of the Western Digital (WD) card.
         ...
> 
> Then proceeded to write its own special stamp the the Winchester.
	...
> 
> I need to know how to put IBM's special stamp back on this disk.  Hopefully,
> the code needed to do the job is at some known address on the card.

The WD card does not put any special stamp on the disk. What is does is
the low level formatting of the drive. IBM does not provide a similar
routine with their disk controller.

Your IBM controller should not have any trouble reading the disk formatted
by the WD controller, however! From your description of the procedure you
went through, you have only done the low level format of the drive. You
will need to also do an FDISK, followed by a FORMAT command on your newly
formatted hard drive. The dos FORMAT command doesn't really format the disk,
all it does is reads the bad sectors and locks them out, and creates a boot
block and initial directory structure on the disk. FDISK is required to tell
DOS that it is allowed access to the disk, and how much of the disk it can 
use (never mind that you only USE msdos!)

-- 

del (Erik Lindberg) aka Hugable


Hugs: One of the few good things in life that are still free.