ST-506 Revisited

[0dell]

Does anyone have any ideas for getting an ST-506 drive working in any current operating system?

I've got the controller card and the drive from the computer of a relative who passed away recently. He was a writer, and obviously not a techophile. I was hoping that Windows 95 or 98 might still have generic drivers to support this technology, but I can't seem to turn anything up. I'm not even sure if any of my machines have the bios to recognize these parts.

I know that Linux offers ST-506 as a possible interface, but I'm not even sure just how generic the interface's signature non-attached controller is.

Any advice might help me cling to my last few hairs,

0dell

 

[Peter]

Well ST-506 is what we still have as "IDE", only that the controller card has been moved into the drive.
Original ST-506 has the controller on an ISA card, and a stupid drive. IDE moved the controller into the
drive, using a reduced ISA bus for the drive cable. Later the bus on the cable got speed increases, and
even later, the bus interface on the mainboard got a DMA data pump, that's all. Other than for those
throughput increases, it's still the same old crap.

Generic PIO mode IDE drivers will happily adopt the ST-506 card-and-drive arrangement.
You need a mainboard with an ISA slot and the builtin IDE controllers disabled, the controller card and
drive, the drive's geometry parameters entered manually in BIOS, and you're set.

regards, Peter

 

[mandatory]

Yes, what Peter said, as long as the controller card is for the AT architecture and not XT. If it's an XT card it won't work in an AT, as the Bios will be incompatable. You can probably find an AT MFM controller somewhere on the internet.

 

[Peter]

... or if you want to go really weird, I have an Adaptec A4000 SCSI-to-ST506 adapter board lying around

XT ST506 controllers bring their own HDD BIOS, and work in ATs too. The difficult part is that you need to
configure them by jumping into the configuration program in ROM using DEBUG.EXE, with the start address unknown
unless you have the manual for the controller. Geez, I have been in this business for too long :/

However, I'm not sure about current operating system support for those - the hardware programming model
is not something that was used lateron. Linux does have driver support for that however.

regards, Peter

 

[Demon-Xanth]

Wow, 5MB. Might want to get an old system, install DOS 3.3, copy onto a floppy (or three ), because this might get REAL interesting.

 

[0dell]

Well, I'm really encouraged to hear that this can possibly work. Nothing sadder that slowly iterating through every conceivable bios change and hardware reconfiguration only to discover later that, say, you can't get three devices on a single IDE cable. (I swear I was very young.)

I think I have the necessary drive geometry information, and it is an AT device, but I'm not sure about disabling my built in IDE controllers. I'm assuming this would just involve setting "On-Chip Primary/Secondary PCI IDE" to disabled in my bios, but figuring out how to configure some kind of mass storage device for backing up the ST-506 drive, without the benefit of my existing hardware config, also seems pretty daunting. I'll certainly walk down this road if I have to, but if anyone can suggest any approach that would allow me to keep one modern IDE drive working along with this, it would be yet another huge help.

I'm racing home right now to get back to work on this,

0dell

 

[Peter]

Yes, saying "disabled" to "Onboard IDE" in your system BIOS "peripherals" page is the way to go.

To get a modern IDE drive running alongside, you have two options:

(1) Plug the AT card and old drive in, disable both onboard IDE channels, and see whether that old controller takes the Primary or Secondary controller spot. Then enable the other one on the mainboard, and plug your IDE drive there.

(2) Use a PCI IDE card. These run native PCI mode, not legacy compatible IDE, and don't collide with ST506 controllers at all.

regards, Peter

 

[0dell]

Peter,
You are very much like a super-hero. I will keep you posted on my progress.

Thanks,
0dell

 

[0dell]

Well,
It's not going as smoothly as I'd hoped it might. I keep getting a "Primary Master Hard Disk Fail" message, which is certainly not beyond the realm of possibility since this drive is probably right around bar mitzvah age. It's disconcerting, though, because I'm quite confident this was working in its original home, and because I get the same error message if I don't even install the controller card. I can feel that the drive is in fact spinning, and it doesn't seem to be making any uglier sounds than you'd expect.

The tips I've already gotten are way beyond the best I'd hoped for, but if anyone has any further guidance for me, I'd sure appreciate it. Here are the full specs:

The Drive
The Controller

CMOS Setup I'm Using:
SIZE: 32
CYLS:615
HEAD: 4
PRECOMP:616
LANDZ: 670
SECTOR: 26
MODE: Normal

Thanks again for all the help,
0dell

 

[Peter]

Ouch, this looks as if this is an XT controller. That an 8-bit ISA card (i.e. a card that doesn't use the entire length of the ISA slot, only the larger section)?

If so, then you need to say "not installed" in system BIOS, and see what happens then. The controller's BIOS should at some point get control and handle the drive furtheron.

regards, Peter

 

[ScottMac]

Well, it's about the right age. Try doing a "calibrated drop" on the powered-on drive.

Many of the old hard drives had sticky actuator arms (the pivoting thing the heads attach to). Occasionally, you had to give 'em a bump to get the actuators unstuck. Lifting one end of the drive about an inch above the tabletop and letting it drop would be enough.

Next, the ISA hard drive controller cards used INT 14 (primary) and INT 11 (secondary). Try hard-setting the interrupt in BIOS.

You may also have to address or exclude the drive's ROM address in BIOS.

Make sure you're using the right cable (controller--> drive).

Make sure you are on the correct connector of your correct cable (the end, I believe).

When the drive powers up, you should hear a light clicking noise as the heads index.


FWIW, they also make good targets at the rifle range, especially if they're powered up when the shooting starts.


Good Luck

Scott

 

[0dell]

I've seem to have gotten a little farther with these tips, but I'm still not seeing this drive. Here's where I stand:

Peter said:


<< If so, then you need to say "not installed" in system BIOS, and see what happens then. The controller's BIOS should at some point get control and handle the drive furtheron. >>


I understood this to mean that I should remove the CMOS settings for the ancient drive, which I did, changing the setting for each of the drives to "none"

This yields an error message of "Disk Boot Failure, Insert System Disk and Press Enter"
With the drive characteristics in there I get "Primary Hard Disk Fail" as my standard error message.

On ScottMac's guidance, I started trying to play around with interrupts in the BIOS. This didn't yield anything until I experimentally added a second ISA device. Then I started getting this info before any error message:
ISA/PNP Listing
Card No. 1 Device 0 DMA 1,5 IRQ 5 Device Name Audio
Card No. 1 Device 1 DMA NA IRQ 10 Device Name IDE

I got excited seeing the IDE device listed, but still can't seem to get it to recognize the drive. It's also disconcerting that I only get this info when the second card is installed. Maybe this info is just supposed to help with conflicts, and so is excluded if there is only one card? Or maybe there's some sort of IDE device built into the sound card, and the controller card isn't being recognized?

Anyway, I can't thank you guys enough for the help.

 

[Retro2001]

I would say that from your last post it looks like that IDE Device is probably your sound card's IDE controller. Most older ISA era soundcards had an IDE controller to connect to a CD-ROM drive.

 

[zephyrprime]

<< ISA era soundcards had an IDE controller to connect to a CD-ROM drive. >>


I thought those sound cards used proprietary controllers.

 

[Peter]

That was two steps before that ... When CD-ROM connectors first appeared on sound cards, we had three kinds of proprietary connectors first. Then came a very brief adventure to SCSI (Genuine Creative SB16-SCSI anyone? ), and then it settled in on the cheapest - IDE.

regards, Peter

 

[0dell]

Well,
IDE on the soundcard makes sense. Now I just have to figure out why my hard drive controller isn't being recognized. I may go out and see if I can find a second ancient controller and hard drive, so I have some idea whether these parts even work before I worry myself too much more about their configuration.

 

[Retro2001]

My advice for you would be to hit somewhere like Ebay and see if you can flat out buy a working system that was comparable to the one your relitave owned. Then you could just swap in the controller card / hdd and copy everything to floppies.

Peace,
will