Re: Help needed - Vulcan hard drive

[dat33228@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Derek A. Taubert)]

Ok, time for me to follow up on this:

 1 Setup before: Vulcan Gold ROM, bad WD93048 mechanism
 2 Installed new WD93044 mechanism, Gold firmware would crash when booting
   GS/OS from another drive or trying to run Part.manager
 3 Installed old 40Meg ROM (lucky I kept it), Part.manager told me I was
   missing a partition table, and created it for me
 4 Re-installed Gold ROM and everything is copasetic

>   There are only a limited number of hard drive models that work with the
>Vulcan Gold ROM.  I know that there is only one Western Digital 40 Meg-ish
>drive that works.  Unfortunately, I can't remember the model number (or the
>exact size) of the drive.  AE doesn't use the WD mechanisms anymore; they've
>gone exclusively to Connors.

Hmm.  The WD93048 I originally had was a pre-IDE type drive (wouldn't work on
my roommate's Gateway on-board IDE controller), but the new one (WD93044) is
IDE compatible.  Everything is working fine, and faster, too (old drive was
optimal at 5:1, new is 1:1).

>... and the guy said to load up the Vulcan software
>and type  AE    I can't remember if this was right at the main menu or under
>Partitoin Manager - anyway, it allows a low lever type of format that fixed
>my HD problem.

Cool, I'll have to remember this.

>Back when I used to work at AE, the firmware for the drives was designed to
>"know" about different hard drive models.  Somewhere in the firmware was
>encoded a table describing info about each model (# of tracks, sectors,
>etc.).  I suspect that your firmware doesn't know about your drive, so it
>can't control the drive.

Not entirely true.  The Vulcan Gold can control drives of different sizes, but
you are right about the original firmware.

>Also, the 40meg firmware only knew how to control 40 meg drives.  If you
>want to upgrade the size of the drive, you need to buy a new EPROM from AE.

In my current situation, that's not a problem.  I did notice that my current
drive thinks that it has as many cylinders as my old drive (from "initializing"
it with the old firmware installed, no doubt).  Luckily, the new one is a wee
bit bigger, and it isn't much of a problem (so I can't access a few K on the
disk, :-( ).

>Aha! Biased opinion following :): Buy a Turbo IDE. That will give you
>- a lot of speed (i.e. faster than a RF SCSI) and
>- no trouble with your drive :)

I've considered it many times, but all is well now.  What software support
utils come with the Turbo IDE?

Thanx for your help!
-- 
Derek Taubert                   |  Ask me about TCP/IP for the Apple IIgs!
d-taubert@uiuc.edu              |  Really, I'm serious!
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