A500 with A590, A590 being wierd on format

Arkanoid_376970 · Groupie in Training Joined: 12 May 2011 Age: 19 Posts: 27

Hi all!

I had another crack at getting my Hard Disk to work, and it is still being Difficult. I am Running KS 1.3 and WB 1.3, and am using HDToolbox to manipulate the drive. Until recently, it displeyed "WDH0:NDOS", and not realising i had to initialise the disk opened up HDToolbox and re-Low level formatted the drive. It returned no faults on validation, but started being wierd again, displaying "Not a DOS Disk" in inititalisation. After another Low level format it now displays "Illegal Address 391!" when i try to validate and displays "WDH0:LSEG" on the desktop. Can anyone please help me with this?

Ark

EDIT: I set the partitions to OFS instead of FFS, and not WDH0 will allow me to initialise, albeit with a read/write error. Where could this be from?
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could not agree more that 1+1=2

lifeschool · Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2012 12:56 pm Post subject:

Sounds like Low Level Format may have damaged the disk in some way, or has failed to mark bad sectors as bad. I never trust low level format since I tried it on a PC drive and it became unusable and I had to throw it away. If the drive in the A590 is the original one it may have corroded by now, and any use of it may just speed up that corrosion. My advice would be to just get another drive for it and take it from there. There should be no need to lowlevel the drive, and I certainly would not recommend doing so. Usually even brand new drives can be partitioned and formatted quite naturally without anything further.

Ok, this is just one view. Not an expert these days, any other comments?

Arkanoid_376970 · Groupie in Training Joined: 12 May 2011 Age: 19 Posts: 27

I was thinking it ma have been corrupted, at least it gives me an excuse to open it up, slot in an extra 2MB ram and upgrade to a 4GB SCSI HDD. Thanks for the fast reply btw Smile

Ark
_________________
could not agree more that 1+1=2

motrucker · Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2012 9:37 pm Post subject:

@ Arkanoid_376970

How are you formatting the partitions? This may be part of your trouble.

Arkanoid_376970 · Groupie in Training Joined: 12 May 2011 Age: 19 Posts: 27

I am formatting the sectors by initialising them in workbench as i would a normal disk. I think lifeschool was right in saying that the low level format may have ruined the disk, as it will no lenger verify. When I click 'Verify' in HDToolbox, i get a "Invalid Adress Error 391!" soo after clicking 'Verify Disk" and the verify stops. Even though it allows me to create partitions, these partitions either get read/write errors (in OFS) or are displayed as WHD0:LSEG and say "Not a DOS Disk" after formatting, although they then display "WHD0:DOSA". I have started looking for a new drive, and have found a SCSI 100MB 50 pin drive on ebay which i may be able to get cheap. Now just to find some 256x4 120ns CMOS DRAMS to upgrade the ram in the A590 to 2MB. Anyone have any appropriate leads to those chips?

Thanks

Ark
_________________
could not agree more that 1+1=2

motrucker · Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2012 10:22 pm Post subject:

Yes, it sounds like the low level format may have done the drive in.
Good luck with the new drive.

Arkanoid_376970 · Groupie in Training Joined: 12 May 2011 Age: 19 Posts: 27

thanks, I took it apart this morning... and found that the RAM banks are full and the jumper set to amnesia... Free 2MB RAM for the win. Should get the new 100MB SCSI drive tomorrow.

Ark
_________________
could not agree more that 1+1=2

Arkanoid_376970 · Groupie in Training Joined: 12 May 2011 Age: 19 Posts: 27

Ok, I got the 100MB drive this morning, i made a 50 pin cable and hooked up the drive. I am not hearing it spin up, and HDToolbox is saying there is no drive connected. Should I just save the hassle and just buy a proper 50 pin SCSI cable?

On a happier note, the 2MB expansion works perfectly, its all displaying (along with the 512K from the internall chip RAM and the 512K trapdoor slow RAM) in WB1.3, so thats a plus i guess...

I set the jumper to SCSI (moving over the jumper to the right/center pins instead of left/center pins) and connected the internal power socket to the drive.

Thanks

Ark
_________________
could not agree more that 1+1=2

Arkanoid_376970 · Groupie in Training Joined: 12 May 2011 Age: 19 Posts: 27

Ok, I've upgraded to the 100 mb scsi and hdtoolbox says " driver not installed" or some crap. Is there a special driver disk, or would hdinsttools fix it?
_________________
could not agree more that 1+1=2

motrucker · Posted: Mon May 07, 2012 6:05 pm Post subject:

I have never used a 590, but I have never heard of a "driver" being needed with any SCSI device.
Give us the exact error you are getting.

tjlazer · Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2012 5:33 am Post subject:

Try HDInstTools and see if it helps. Do a quick format of drive after partitioning.