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Article View: comp.sys.zenith.z100
Article #176

Adding a ST506 disk drive (Having BIG problems, need help!)

#176
From: Jeff Johnson
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 17:20
36 lines
2092 bytes
Hello All,

	I am having a HUGE problem adding a disk drive to an old Zenith
8088 based PC that belongs to a friend of mine that got it from the Military.
It is a dual 360K floppy based system w/ 360K of memory in the system and
a few serial ports and parallel ports. I think its also one of those MILSPEC
tempested versions as well.

	Anyway, I was told that the system (With its MFM-150 diagnostics)
would recognize a Western Digital MFM controller and a 20MB disk drive
like the Seagate ST-225 (This is the exact combonation I am using).
When I boot the system the drive activity LED flashes, so Im sure the
connection is fine. I boot Zenith DOS 3.21 off of original distribution
floppies. If I run 'part' the system telles me that there is one fixed
disk, and when I select it it tells me the exact geometry of the ST-225
and lets me specify a partition and select it as the boot partition.
I make the whole disk 0one partition and it says that Part 1 is 20.8 MB
from cyl 0 to cyl 613, and that part 1 is the boot partition.

	I then save changes and exit to monitor. When I reboot off of floppy
and rerun 'part' all that info is gone like it wasnt written to disk.
I also tried 'prep' and after 3.5 hours it finished and said that the disk
had too many errors to be used. This disk was fine and was taken off of
a 286 system that ran great.

	Does any wonderful person out there have any insight to what maybe
happening here. Is there a minimum BIOS version? Is there a 'pre-prep'
utility that I dont know about?


PLEASE REPLY VIA EMAIL TO: jeff@wsm.com  (I am not subscribed to this group)

Many Thanks in advance...

Jeff Johnson
jeff@wsm.com
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Message-ID: <1992Sep14.172012.6704@wsm.com>
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!europa.asd.contel.com!darwin.sura.net!spool.mu.edu!caen!hellgate.utah.edu!dog.ee.lbl.gov!news!nosc!crash!wsmvax!jeff
From: jeff@wsm.com (Jeff Johnson)
Subject: Adding a ST506 disk drive (Having BIG problems, need help!)
Message-ID: <1992Sep14.172012.6704@wsm.com>
Organization: Western Scientific
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 17:20:12 GMT
Lines: 37