Vulcan HD Breakthru

["Paul Grammens" <grammens@svn.net>]

I've been playing with my 40 meg Vulcan, trying to get different IDE drives
to work with it. I learned some tricks, and got some common drives to
partion, format and boot.

First, I have some drives from old PC's  that are identical to my Vulcan's
stock drive, so I knew they would work. They didn't work at first, the
Vulcan Partion Manager couldn't save the partion info. I had to use an
ancient PC util called HDTEST to "low-level format" the drives first. I
think the important thing is to erase the PC info from the drive. Removing
the partion with Fdisk doesn't do it.   Once that is done, the drives work
perfectly. Those are theWD drives listed below.

Next, I tried a 100 meg drive. It partioned, but wouldn't format.  Playing
around with a variety of drives, I think the problem is that the Vulcan can
only work with limited hard disk parameters.  It can handle 4 heads, but not
8. It does display the manufacturer and the cyl/hd/sect of the drives
(usually) so it's reading the parameters reported by the drive. It is not
looking for a particular manufacturer, just the parameters.

The key for a 40 meg Vulcan is to find a drive that reports 4 heads. I use
an old 486-100 to autodetect these drives, and view the parameters, and the
util I mentioned to wipe the PC partition. I found several Connors that are
half-height 3.5" 40 meg drives that have two physical disks and 4 heads.
They work perfectly, and are much better drives than the original WD's.  The
1/3 height drives I tried only report 2 heads. Then the cylinder number or
sect/trk number is too high, apparently. I was able to get one 32 meg
partion to sort of work. It partitioned and formatted, but doesn't copy
files reliably. It may just be bad. I'll have to look for more small, old
drives to try.

Here is a list of drives that I have found to work with my 40 meg Vulcan.
-Paul


                                  +PHYSICAL+ LOG.                      PAGE
144
    MANUFACTURER    UNFORMAT WTH. PL CYLS ST CYLS INTERFACE  ACC  XFER.
POWER
    MODEL NUMBER    FORMATED HGT. HD PREC AC HDS  REC.METH   T-T  CACHE
MTBF
                                     L.Z.    ST        ADDITIONAL COMMENTS

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
    WESTERN DIGITAL   48.0MB 3.50  2  782 27  977 IDE(AT)   70ms   7.8Mb
7.0W
    WD93048-A         40.0MB HALF  4      SM   5  (2,7)RLL  4.5ms
30K
                                              17                 1:1
INTERLEAVE
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
    WESTERN DIGITAL   48.0MB 3.50  2  782 27  977 IDE(AT)   69ms   7.8Mb
6.9W
    WD93048-AD        43.2MB HALF  4      SM   5  (2,7)RLL
40K
    (My original)                             17     56 BIT ECC, 3:1
INTERLEAVE
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
    WESTERN DIGITAL   48.0MB 3.50  2  782 27  977 IDE(AT)   28ms   7.8Mb
6.9W
    WD93044-A         43.2MB HALF  4      SM   5  (2,7)RLL  4.0ms   8KB
40K
    (Tried, works)                            17          56 BIT ECC, 3,329
RPM
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
    CONNER                   3.50  2 788 26
    CP-341            42.9MB HALF  4 NONE VC      (2,7)RLL
      Works in Vulcan         AUTO                   COMPAQ OEM, TYPE 17
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
    CONNER                   3.50  2  805 26      IDE(AT)   29ms   7.5Mb
    CP-342            42.9MB HALF  4 NONE VC      (2,7)RLL

     Works in Vulcan           AUTO
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------
---