St-412 + 5150bx4

[CaffeinePizza]

I've acquired an for parts PC and have extracted the 130W PSU, the ST-412 and 5150BX4 hard drive controller from it. I placed them in another working PC. The BIOS chip on the hard drive controller is KIM11. I cannot figure out the SW1 configuration for this drive. Any ideas? SSTOR thinks it's an 18MB drive at the moment.

Should I provide a picture of the hard drive controller card and/or any other configuration I might have?

I will provide whatever information that's necessary.

thanks!

 

[modem7]

... and 5150BX4 hard drive controller from it.

That will be a DTC 5150BX.
The DTC 5150BX is intended for XT-class computers.

I placed them in another working PC.

It that an XT class computer, or an AT one ?

I cannot figure out the SW1 configuration for this drive.

My ST-412 does not have a SW1. Where is the SW1 that you write of ?

SSTOR thinks it's an 18MB drive at the moment.

Note that old drives like the ST-412 cannot be interrogated for make/model/size information.
So, if your 5150BX card is in an XT-class computer, 18 MB would be what the 5150BX has been configured for.

 

[CaffeinePizza]

It is an IBM PC 5150, both the computer the parts came from and the one they went into.
The SW1 isn't on the st-412 itself; I meant the controller. I'll provide pictures soon.
I was able to make the controller set to 306 cylinders and 4 heads and 10 MB. However SpeedStor test showed every sector as defective, so I stopped that test. I LLF the drive with C800:5 before doing the test. Fdisk fails to load. Either the controller doesn't work in the PC or the drive is toasted...

I'll get pictures as soon as I can. Thanks for the reply! I've read quite a bit on minuszerodegrees! Very useful source of information.

 

[modem7]

The SW1 isn't on the st-412 itself; I meant the controller. I'll provide pictures soon.

I used to have a 5150BX, but I cannot find it now. But I did find a photo of one online.
The "KIM11" ROM is not the BIOS ROM. That ROM will contain the code for the card's CPU.
The other ROM, labelled with something that starts with "BXD" is the BIOS ROM. Version BXD06 appears to be common for the 5150BX.

I was able to make the controller set to 306 cylinders and 4 heads and 10 MB. However SpeedStor test showed every sector as defective, so I stopped that test. I LLF the drive with C800:5 before doing the test. Fdisk fails to load. Either the controller doesn't work in the PC or the drive is toasted...

* The ST-412 has a stepper flag (A.K.A. arm, damper, ...) as shown at [here]. That arm should slowly move from one extreme to the other during the LLF.
* ST-412 terminator and drive-select shown at [here].
* Because, the shunt block on the ST-412's selects the first drive-select position, cable per [here].

 

[CaffeinePizza]

I used to have a 5150BX, but I cannot find it now. But I did find a photo of one online.
The "KIM11" ROM is not the BIOS ROM. That ROM will contain the code for the card's CPU.
The other ROM, labelled with something that starts with "BXD" is the BIOS ROM. Version BXD06 appears to be common for the 5150BX.


* The ST-412 has a stepper flag (A.K.A. arm, damper, ...) as shown at [here]. That arm should slowly move from one extreme to the other during the LLF.
* ST-412 terminator and drive-select shown at [here].
* Because, the shunt block on the ST-412's selects the first drive-select position, cable per [here].

No wonder I couldn't find any information on the "KIM11" BIOS! Haha!
I will get back to you on the rest. Today (13th) is my birthday, so I've been away. Thanks again.

 

[CaffeinePizza]

Picture of controller. Unless I'm blind, I couldn't find anything with BXD on it.
http://i.imgur.com/pwuKn0V.jpg

 

[modem7]

Today (13th) is my birthday, so I've been away.

Happy birthday.

Picture of controller. Unless I'm blind, I couldn't find anything with BXD on it.
http://i.imgur.com/pwuKn0V.jpg

At the far right of your card is a large chip with a round window in it. That will be the BIOS ROM. The sticker has come off the ROM. Over a long period of time, light going through that window will start erasing the ROM. You should cover that window.

The 5150BX that I was referring to earlier is pictured at [here]. At the bottom-left of the card, the "2" following the "5150BX" is possibly a revision number. Your card has "4" and so is possibly the fourth revision.

 

[CaffeinePizza]

Happy birthday.


At the far right of your card is a large chip with a round window in it. That will be the BIOS ROM. The sticker has come off the ROM. Over a long period of time, light going through that window will start erasing the ROM. You should cover that window.

The 5150BX that I was referring to earlier is pictured at [here]. At the bottom-left of the card, the "2" following the "5150BX" is possibly a revision number. Your card has "4" and so is possibly the fourth revision.

I never knew that. I'll put some black electrical tape or something over it to block the light. Thanks

When I LLF with C800:5, the stepper slowly goes from the light sensor all the way to the other side, then just comes back around to the other side faster. It only does this once and the computer says the format is complete.
I reboot the system and try to open FDISK and it says there's an error reading the hard drive then drops back to the DOS prompt. Like before, doing a surface test in SpeedStor shows all of the cylinder numbers as bad in the defect table. When it does the surface scan, the stepper motor rattles back and forth, slowly increasing its arclength, and showing a defect for every head on every cylinder.
I tried using another MFM data cable I had, but it's the same problem. Is it a possibility the drive or controller is just toast? I have a WD hard drive controller (16-bit ISA) that came out of an old Tandy that *may* work, but I'd have to go find it and get the model number from it.

 

[modem7]

When I LLF with C800:5, the stepper slowly goes from the light sensor all the way to the other side, then just comes back around to the other side faster. It only does this once and the computer says the format is complete.

The described stepper movement is a good sign. Keep in mind that the LLF code built into primitive hard disk controllers is quite crude, often with no verification. Many times, I have experimented with different controllers by removing the data cable (i.e. no possible way formatting could be occurring, or read back occurring) and seen the LLF complete without error.

Note too that you can often run SpeedStor's seek test without the data cable in place.

Is it a possibility the drive or controller is just toast?

Yes. Imagine the controller's read circuit being faulty (as an example). Or the drive's read circuitry being faulty. If the LLF code is not doing any verification, you will not know about the fault at LLF time.
Later, you run something like FDISK, something that results in an attempted read, and only then do you discover a problem.

 

[tonata]

Hi,

The Olivetti M24 has an internal HDU and presumably HDD ROM on it.

So to use the DTC 5150BX4 in a Olivetti motherboard with a real old hard drive you need to set:

Motherboard DIPSW1/3 ON if you are missing the BIOS chip on your controller, but if you have the BIOS chip then you might need to to set it to "OFF" so that the ROM can be loaded from it

If you wan to use XT-IDE card I think you need to set DIPSW1/3 to "OFF" on the Olivetti motherboard and completely remove the DTC 5150BX4 to avoid any conflicts. Also some XT-IDE cards revisions require "Compatibility mode" instead of "Hi-Speed" mode.