HardStrap drive?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Overlord
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Overlord

How goes it?
I'll be the first to admit I'm a bit shaky on IDE stuff.
The last drives I had in the house that weren't SCSI
were doublespaced MFM drives. But...

At work, we were replacing some old 540meg IDE
drives in a series of 486 systems. We were putting in a 20gig drive.
Secondary IDE channel had a CDROM.
Put the new drive on the primary IDE channel and jumpered it for master,
just like the drives coming out. Tried to put the parameters into the BIOS
under User, but the system choked.
Tried to autodetect but system choked.
Finally I set the LZ to 0 and the system booted and the software install
disks fired up, created 3 partitions (500meg, 500meg, 250meg) and
appeared to take a long time to load/expand files... finally crashed.

I figured the drive needed an overlay or a BIOS flash (God help us!) for
the antique system to handle a larger drive.

I had other work to do and other techs went to lunch.
When I got back by, system was running partitioning and installing
software. They'd called the mfg tech who suggested they HardStrap
the drive. They jumpered the drive as Master AND Slave, BIOS
autodetected the drive as a 2.1gig, partitioned it fine, installed software
and was off and running.

Can someone explain this HardStrapping deal?
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Overlord said:
How goes it?
I'll be the first to admit I'm a bit shaky on IDE stuff.
The last drives I had in the house that weren't SCSI
were doublespaced MFM drives. But...

At work, we were replacing some old 540meg IDE
drives in a series of 486 systems. We were putting in a 20gig drive.
Secondary IDE channel had a CDROM.
Put the new drive on the primary IDE channel and jumpered it for master,
just like the drives coming out. Tried to put the parameters into the BIOS
under User, but the system choked.
Tried to autodetect but system choked.
Finally I set the LZ to 0 and the system booted and the software install
disks fired up, created 3 partitions (500meg, 500meg, 250meg) and
appeared to take a long time to load/expand files... finally crashed.

I figured the drive needed an overlay or a BIOS flash (God help us!) for
the antique system to handle a larger drive.

I had other work to do and other techs went to lunch.
When I got back by, system was running partitioning and installing
software. They'd called the mfg tech who suggested they HardStrap
the drive. They jumpered the drive as Master AND Slave, BIOS
autodetected the drive as a 2.1gig, partitioned it fine, installed software
and was off and running.

Can someone explain this HardStrapping deal?
~~~~~~
Bait for spammers:
root@localhost
postmaster@localhost
admin@localhost
abuse@localhost
postmaster@[127.0.0.1]
(e-mail address removed)
~~~~~~
Remove "spamless" to email me.
Click to expand...
I for one would love to understand this too...
 
Overlord said:
How goes it?
I'll be the first to admit I'm a bit shaky on IDE stuff.
The last drives I had in the house that weren't SCSI
were doublespaced MFM drives. But...

At work, we were replacing some old 540meg IDE
drives in a series of 486 systems. We were putting in a 20gig drive.
Secondary IDE channel had a CDROM.
Put the new drive on the primary IDE channel and jumpered it for master,
just like the drives coming out. Tried to put the parameters into the BIOS
under User, but the system choked.
Tried to autodetect but system choked.
Finally I set the LZ to 0 and the system booted and the software install
disks fired up, created 3 partitions (500meg, 500meg, 250meg) and
appeared to take a long time to load/expand files... finally crashed.

I figured the drive needed an overlay or a BIOS flash (God help us!) for
the antique system to handle a larger drive.

I had other work to do and other techs went to lunch.
When I got back by, system was running partitioning and installing
software. They'd called the mfg tech who suggested they HardStrap
the drive. They jumpered the drive as Master AND Slave, BIOS
autodetected the drive as a 2.1gig, partitioned it fine, installed software
and was off and running.
Click to expand...

I've never heard of it called HardStrap, but most (if not all) modern ATA
drives can be jumpered into a mode that works with older BIOS and OS
releases. On a Seagate drive, it's a single jumper that enables that mode.
It's clearly described on the label that explains how to use the jumpers.

Phil
--
Philip D. Barila Windows DDK MVP
Seagate Technology, LLC
(720) 684-1842
As if I need to say it: Not speaking for Seagate.
E-mail address is pointed at a domain squatter. Use reply-to instead.
 
Phil said:
software and was off and running.
Click to expand...
So, a 20G drive was recognized as a 2.1G, is what you are saying?
Although the technic is interesting, the end result still is
frustrating, no?
 
So, a 20G drive was recognized as a 2.1G, is what you are saying?
Although the technic is interesting, the end result still is
frustrating, no?
Click to expand...

Well, for me, it seems like a waste. The software install created 3 partitions;
QNX, QNY, DOS for a total of only 1¼gig. I suspect that this is one of the
occasional drives you come across that will jumper for a smaller capacity
but never did bring up the specs on that particular model drive. Next time
I have to tear down that system I will write down the drive model (Maxtor I think)
and bring up the specs on the drive from the site.
In any case the 2.1gig is in excess of what the software intends to partition
and the true 20gig capacity would be way overkill in this case.
Just wondered if this jumpering practice was a general thing or specific to this
drive.
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It's QNX, a unix knockoff, and a scaled down version of it at that.
Some Unix commands work in it and some don't. I'll have to take
a look but don't have a utility that would readily give me the true
size of the drive itself as opposed to the partitions.
after the OS was installed, does the system displays the real 20gig?
Click to expand...
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postmaster@localhost
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John Doue said:
So, a 20G drive was recognized as a 2.1G, is what you are saying?
Although the technic is interesting, the end result still is
frustrating, no?
Click to expand...

Sorry, if it's frustrating, but you are asking the disk to make the host
capable of understanding a disk it's not capable of understanding. In order
to make the host capable of understanding the disk, you need to use a new
BIOS or an overlay INT 13h handler. In the absence of either of those, you
have to limint the disk to something the host understands. The 2 G mode is
a way to do that for almost all the BIOSes out there.

Phil
--
Philip D. Barila Windows DDK MVP
Seagate Technology, LLC
(720) 684-1842
As if I need to say it: Not speaking for Seagate.
E-mail address is pointed at a domain squatter. Use reply-to instead.
 
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