SirMike Posted May 10, 2018 Share Posted May 10, 2018 Hi I am new to this forum, so if this post is in the wrong section or if I am doing it wrong please tell me. My question is - I have a Myarc HFDC card in my expansion box and I am running two 20mb hard drives. All OK so far. I have a NEC D3142 hard drive of 40mb which I would like to use as drive 2 However I cannot get it to format with Myarc disk manager 5, as I do not know all of the parameters to fill in the configuration section. Has anyone used one of these drives and can tell me the missing values: I have 642 cylinders 8 heads 17 sectors per track then it asks for precompensation, interlace, other questions also. HELP PLEASE? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+9640News Posted May 10, 2018 Share Posted May 10, 2018 The 17 sectors/track is likely for 512 byte sectors. I would enter 32 sectors per track. As far as precompensation and interlace, I would use whatever the defaults recommend. Mike Maksimik did write a program for the Geneve that would allow accessing 34 sectors per track to get a bit more information out of a hard drive, but I would keep it at 32 sectors/track. Beery Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SirMike Posted May 10, 2018 Author Share Posted May 10, 2018 (edited) Thanks for that, does that mean that the Myarc card somehow 'finds' information off the drive as you enter information, or does it just have a 'default' section in its programming that puts in stock values that may fit the bill. The information I have came from a webpage. i originally had my 99/4a in 1982 and mothballed it the early 90's moving to a PC. I still have many hundreds of 5.25" floppys and modules and decided to resurrect it a few months ago, hence the purchase of the Myarc card and two 20mb drives, the 40mb is for mass storage as I back up the floppy library to it and replace the disks with 3.5" Hence the request for assistance, the 40mb will be needed soon. Edited May 10, 2018 by SirMike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+mizapf Posted May 10, 2018 Share Posted May 10, 2018 No, you cannot get information from the MFM drive. Those comfort features were introduced with SCSI/IDE. The values for Precomp and RedWrite are calculated from the number of cylinders. They are just guesses and do not need to be precise. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swim Posted May 10, 2018 Share Posted May 10, 2018 Don't forget to remove the resistor pack from drive one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SirMike Posted May 10, 2018 Author Share Posted May 10, 2018 No, you cannot get information from the MFM drive. Those comfort features were introduced with SCSI/IDE. The values for Precomp and RedWrite are calculated from the number of cylinders. They are just guesses and do not need to be precise. Thanks, this is helpful. I need all the information I can get with this. I would like to get this drive working to make my archiving of disks easier rather than backing up to floppy so often. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SirMike Posted May 10, 2018 Author Share Posted May 10, 2018 (edited) Don't forget to remove the resistor pack from drive one. Thanks, but drive one is still running, while I add drive two and try to work out the parameters to get it so the HFDC will format it. Edited May 10, 2018 by SirMike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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