Ideas for how to make IDE drive write-able

[billdeg]

I have a Cordata PPC (8086 portable)...It has a Seagate ST-238 20MB hard drive. I can't format the drive or write to the drive in any way. Not sure of the reason, looking for a manual or a guess as to how to break through this write protection. I came upon a similar problem once when I had a Tandy SX-100 from a Hallmark store that was write protected (it was a public computer in the store for making greeting cards). There is a bank of switches inside the chassis 1-2-3 ON, 4-5-6 OFF.

If I find the answer I will post an update.


bd

 

[Stone]

So you can read from the drive, right? BTW, it's not an IDE drive but rather an MFM/RLL drive.

 

[billdeg]

oops yes mfm! a ST-238

It could very well be the drive is bad, but a lot of Norton/Spinrite work came up nothing.

 

[Chuck(G)]

What's the controller? Does it have a custom ROM?

The way we'd do it in the old days is to put a bit of tape over pin 6 on the 34-conductor edge connector. It then became impossible to write to the drive.

 

[barythrin]

Out of curiosity do you have an MFM cable you can swap out?

 

[Stone]

But can you read from it? Does it have a good partition on it? Without a partition neither Norton nor Spinrite can access it. When you said you can't format it above, did you mean LLF? If not, you should try to LLF it.

 

[SpidersWeb]

Out of curiosity do you have an MFM cable you can swap out?

Yeah, check the cable first.

 

[Cimonvg]

hello
if I remeber correct the speedstor (by "storage dimensions") had a function were you could mark the entire disc as a read-only..
/cimonvg

 

[modem7]

Below is a photo I took in 2009 (pointing out pin 1 orientation on an ST-225 to someone).
Understandably, I am in the "check the cable first" camp.

 

[billdeg]

thanks guys, I will let you know what I find.
Bill