Date : Thu, 30 Nov 2006 11:56:43 -0000
From : BBCMailingList@... (Ian Wolstenholme)
Subject: Formatting a scsi harddisk for ADFS
There used to be a disc image available somewhere which
contained about 20 different hard disc format routines. Most
of them were modified versions of Superform tailored to a
particular manufacturer's disc geometry. Superform is a
ST406/ST512 formatter for use with bridge boards. It issues
a Mode Select command to the disc controller to tell it the
drive shape and then does a Format Entire Media with Defect
List operation to perform the format, then it verifies & writes
the free space map at sectors 0 & 1 and the root directory
at the next 5 sectors.
On this particular disc image there were also a few SCSI
formatters which had more functions like setting bytes per
sector and sectors per track for use with SCSI discs which
work on the Beeb. I'm afraid I can't remember where the
image was saved, probably at 8BS, but I can dig out my
copy and upload it if necessary.
The difficulty is finding drives which will support 256-byte
sectors as required by ADFS. If there is the ability to set
this sector size on some of the more modern Seagate
SCSI drives then I would be most interested to know more
about this.
Best wishes,
Ian
----- Original Message -----
From: Jules Richardson [mailto:julesrichardsonuk@...]
To: bbc-micro@...
Sent: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 03:57:06 -0600
Subject: Re: [BBC-Micro] Formatting a scsi harddisk for ADFS
Mike wrote:
>> I know it should be possible to add the right commands to a program
>> like SuperForm so it will set the right Mode Page before issueing a
>> Format Unit command. Sadly I am not able to write anything like that.
>
> Seagate have a PC utility called 'Seatools enterprise' in the advanced
> section you'll find an option to change the block length to whatever you
> want. For ADFS you need 256 bytes. Easiest way is to hook the drive to a PC
> with a suitable HBA, you may need to install ASPII from adaptec if windows
> doesn't. You can theh use Seatools to do the job.
Or on the Linux side, you can use the sgutils to do it. I don't recall if
there's an 'sgraw'-type binary which can send an arbitrary sequence of bytes
to a device, but I suspect that there is (I think 'sg_wr_mode' may be the thing).
Failing that, it'd be about ten lines of C code to do the job (which I realise
isn't for everyone :-) But still, there are ways and means.
Old Mac LC systems are a good source of low-capacity (40 - 120MB or so) SCSI
drives, incidentally - they still seem pretty common. Whether they'll format
to a 256 byte block size is another matter, though.
cheers
Jules
--
And if eight out of ten cats all prefer whiskas
Do the other two prefer Leslie Judd?
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