Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ucsd!sdcsvax!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!hplabs!hpda!hpcuhb!hp-ses!hpccc!samc From: samc@hpccc.HP.COM (Samuel Chau) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: Perstor PS180-16F HD Controller Problem Message-ID: <5060047@hpccc.HP.COM> Date: 2 Feb 89 18:39:06 GMT References: <638@cimcor.mn.org> Organization: HP Corporate Computing Center Lines: 41 Jim, I don't think I can reach you via e-mail, so I'm posting my response here. I too received BIOS 3.01 from Ted earlier this week. The "head banging" problem I experienced at boot time was gone, but was replaced by double slow seeks (drives making long "errrrrrrrrrr" sounds) just before the system boots up. Ted sent me two chips, a BIOS EPROM and a microcontroller with updated microcode. I'm pretty sure we have the same chips now, but I just want to verify this. I use the PS180-16F with a Mylex 386 motherboard at 20 MHz. I have a pair of Seagate ST-251-1 half-height drives (had to sort through some 5 drives to get a pair to work with the Perstor), and I use HP's DOS 3.3, which I believe is very close to Microsoft's MS-DOS 3.3. I also use SpeedStor from Storage Dimensions to gain access to all 78 Mbytes on each Seagate. It allows you to configure partitions of up to 512 Mbytes. It works with ST-506, ESDI and SCSI drives using MFM or RLL encoding. It is my favorite and I highly recommend it. I don't use the extended partitioning features of DOS 3.3, since I have no control over the cluster size, and it almost always sets the cluster size bigger than I would like to have. By the way, I believe if the Perstor controller is hooked up to only one drive, there is a 10-second "dead time" just before booting. It looks like the controller is trying to talk to the second drive, and doesn't give up and assume it's not there until 10 seconds later. It this what you're seeing? Ted reminded me that a low-level reformat may be necessary when the 3.01 BIOS is put in, but actually I didn't have to do that. You may also want to re-run the ATFSETUP routine to make sure the CMOS memory is properly configured for your drive(s). I hope this helps. I'll need to talk to Ted soon and I'll let you know if anything comes up. Sam Chau HP Cupertino samc@hpda #include