04 Jan 2003, 22:46, MIKE ROSS (1:167/133), wrote to JEAN PARROT:

Hi MIKE.

 JP>>  How can YOU do a ll now or were you
 JP>> talking about an old drive ?

 MR> I was just fishing for help from an old timer about this old esdi 
 MR> drive.  Guess, they're all off to the information super highway...

Not all of us!   :-)   But, I downloaded a bit more 'real life' last week
and am still playing catchup here in TECH.

I just finished searching 20 years of files and strangely, come up with
NOTHING on that particular ESDI drive.  Is that the one with the finned
cast aluminum case that was split down the center with a gasket in between?
 This was a model that Maxtor bought out from MiniScribe, and was never
noted for reliability.  In any case, you didn't provide the drive model
number, which might be more helpful.

I DO have the complete jumper settings for the ACB-2322A, already in a text
file if you need them, but I didn't note any settings that would likely
affect the problems you reported.

In any case, you DO need to leave the controller BIOS enabled, and work
from within there.

The "330Meg" is a number you will never see.  I just ran the math
for your reported 270Meg, and even with the "1048..." calculation
comes out short at about 283Meg.  I seem to recall those formatting to
318Meg.

Working with 1024 x 15 x 36 comes out to 276Meg, and formatting will likely
use up that 6 Meg to arrive at or near your 270 Meg.  From that point, it
does look like you are up against the '1024 cylinder barrier'.

What does FDISK say after the LL format?  Whatever FDISK says will be the
max for that particular setup and configuration.

What class of motherboard is it running on, and what was the "newer
one" you also tried it on?  One comment, when you LL'd it WITH the
BIOS on, you are stuck with keeping the BIOS enabled.  You can't switch
horses in mid-stream, and run it later with the BIOS disabled, without LL
formatting it under that condition.

If you have a MB that will accept the full size of the drive in the CMOS
settings, THEN you can disable the controller BIOS, but you will have to
use an external program to run the LL format.  Such an LL formating program
WAS built into the CMOS/BIOS on most later 386s and 486s, and was suitable
for this.  NEVER use that CMOS setup 'format' option for any IDE drive
though!    


     Good luck...  M.

--- Msged/386 TE 06 (pre)