🚀 go-pugleaf

I posted this question a few days ago, but I think there was a problem, 
so...
 
I bought a Western Digital clone (licensed chipset) RLL controller for my 
formerly MFM drive. The drive is a Micropolis full height 1325 70mb 28ms 
unit with 1024 cylinders, 8 heads, wpcomp is 512 (I'm not sure what this 
last one is so please don't ask me to elaborate). 
 
The controller has a built in BIOS which contains a formatting program (at 
address cc00:5). However, I was not able to successfully use the BIOS 
formatter. For example, when I first started it, it listed the stats as all 
zeros (cylinders, etc). Then I chose the option to change the setup and ste 
it to match my drive types. When I went back in they were wrong again - set 
to something like 623 cylinders, etc.
 
I then disabled the BIOS and used the SpeedStor program. I WAS able to 
format the drive and DOS format it within Speedstor to 110 megs, but when I 
rebooted my machine the AMI BIOS didn't recognize the drive and neither did 
FDISK.  
 
I tried setting the CMOS to my drive type (36 in this case, which is for 
MFM) and then used the "user-defined" drive type and set sectors to 26 (or 
27, I forget which, but I tried both). Still no luck. 

I had to put the old controller back in and restore. I really would like to 
get this controller working but I don't want to go throught the 
backup/format/restore procedure until I have some concrete ideas.

The controller is called a "WA6-VR" and is a 1:1 16-bit floppy/hard disk RLL 
only controller. I believe it is the same as the Western Digital WA-1006. 
The computer is a 25mhz 386 with no caching and a recent AMI BIOS. I tried 
disabling the shadow RAM, etc, all to no avail.

If there are ANY ideas out there, I would sincerely appreciate them. Someone 
suggested to me that setting the AMI drive type to 0 and letting the 
controller BIOS control the drive would work, but I didn't think this would 
be right with an RLL controller. I know some SCSI and ESDI drives work this 
way but I am under the impression that RLL works under DOS and I think that 
letting the controller control the drive might cause some problems with 
utility programs that depend on the CMOS settings.

Let me say right here that, yes, I know the Adaptec ARLL controller is realy 
nifty but I can't afford one right now so that's not a solution. And also I 
know some people believe that formatting an MFM drive to RLL is evil but I 
also happen to know that even if it is a bad idea it will format and work 
RLL ... at least for a while (until, if the drive is too weak for RLL, it 
eventually starts degenerating).

I really need a solution.. my MFM drive is too small and I can't afford 
another right now, and also the MFM controller I have is 2:1 and I need the 
extra speed that the 1:1 and RLL controller provides. 

Thanks in advance for any suggestions (I HOPE!!!)