🚀 go-pugleaf

> > 
> >      As for the 18 to 20 second delay time, I believe that the HD 
> > initialization code (in the optional ROM) is waiting for the drive
> > to come up to speed before accessing it.  If this is indeed the case,
> > there is nothing that you can do.  On a warm boot, do you still 
> > experience the delay?  (If so, it is not due to the drive coming up to speed).
> > 
> > Tom Hjellming
> > ...!ihnp4!hpfcla!thj
> 
> 
> Actually, it is waiting for a possible EXTERNAL HDU to power-up.
> 
> New rev's of boot ROM take care of that delay.
> 
> Gary

I had a similar experience putting a 20Meg on my 6300 (not a +).  I have
the same DTC5150 controller that AT&T uses, but since I bought it myself
I got the BIOS rom (you know, "Optional ROM at C800:0000") with the controller,
and a manual that says how to set the dip switch on the controller board for
the drive type.

As it turned out, none of the 16 entries were appropriate for the ST225 -
all had wrong number of heads or cylinders.  So with the help of DTC I
patched an entry.  Everything worked fine then, except at boot I would
get the same delay for 20 or 30 seconds, and with the screen overflowing with
what seemed to be a controller error number (was it F4?).  Then it would
stop and everything would be fine.  I had earlier put another harddisk (a
30Meg) on the same controller, with no delays.

To make a long story short, I finally noticed that in the documentation,
the first four entries were labelled IBM, the other 12 were labelled DTC.
When I had used an IBM entry, no delays.  With DTC entries, I got delays.
So I tried patching one of the IBM entries instead of a DTC entry and
the delay went away.  The guy at DTC couldn't explain it.  To be on the
safe side, I bought a newer control ROM (BXD6) which didn't need to be patched.

Bob Rindfuss
AT&T Graphics Software Labs
ihnp4!inuxh!rdr