Date: Thu, 06 Jul 1995 14:59:34 EST From: "Kaleb S. KEITHLEY" <kaleb@x.org> To: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Stability/Usability of 2.0.5R Message-ID: <9507061859.AA08735@exalt.x.org> In-Reply-To: Your message of Thu, 06 Jul 1995 13:46:16 EST. <m0sTv0C-0004pHC@bagend.atl.ga.us>
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>
> :> I have one question for these people installing FreeBSD on ESDI... how
> :> is the drive formatted? Did you use the WD BIOS or something like
> :> DiskManager?
>
For years I used a Fastor ESDI controller on a Micropolis 330M drive under
386BSD-0.1 and FreeBSD-1.X. Fastor was a short lived company in Silicon Valley.
I also used a WD1007 (E ???) when I was trying to diagnose my dieing system by
swapping components.
Both controller bios have an option to translate the drive to a "normal" geometry.
Neither controller had a "perfect media" jumper or bios setting that I can recall.
Both cards are pretty typical ISA-type controllers. To do low-level formats,
enable geometry translation, and surface scans you need MS-DOS/debug -- enter
g=c800:5 (or similar depending on the card, i.e. if it has jumpers for setting
the ROM base address, etc., use that address instead; e.g. g=c500:5.) That'll
bring up a set of menus and it should be pretty obvious from there on. After
that you just disklabel it and newfs it.
I never used DiskManager, or anything like it. Not sure what those would have
been for OS/2 and {386,Free}BSD. OS/2, since 2.0 anyway, has never relied on
the BIOS for the disk, and I could have used the drive in untranslated mode if
I wanted. I only used translated mode because 386BSD needed it. Can't say as I
remember what FreeBSD needed, I probably just left it when I switched to FreeBSD.
--
Kaleb KEITHLEY
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