[Coco] Formatting L.R. Tech Hard Drive in OS9 Level II

[Steven Hirsch]

On Sun, 10 Jan 2016, Mark J. Blair wrote:

> The system came with a floppy disk controller with Owl-Ware Hard Drive 
> Basic 3 in ROM, a SASI controller cartridge, and a hard drive enclosure 
> containing a Miniscribe 2425M and a Xebec S1410 SASI disk controller. 
> Some very sparse printed documentation and notes came with it, mostly 
> describing how to set it up for use under Basic using a utility disk 
> that doesn't seem to be included, and noting that if it will be used 
> under OS9 then it must be formatted there first, then configured 
> differently for use under Basic. I'm trying to set it up under OS9 Level 
> II v 2.00.01, for which I have original media and manuals, using the 
> software and instructions on the "LRTECH 20 MEG HARD DISK DRIVERS B/U F" 
> floppy that came with the package. It's the one that I imaged as 
> DISK02.IMD in the above GitHub repository.
>
> I've set up my system as follows:

(snip)

> 14) format /hd

> I can get as far as step 14. When I try to format the hard drive, I get 
> an ERROR #245.

Sorry if this is obvious, but I don't see where you low-level formatted 
the disk.  Very doubtful that issuing the OS-9 format command will do 
that.

It's fairly easy to talk to the S1410 controller if you're able to issue 
arbitrary SCSI commands.  Have you been able to find the 1410 
documentation?

IIRC, the 1410 must either have the hard disk geometry hard-coded into the 
EPROM on the controller (there were many, many OEM versions for that 
purpose) - OR, something needs to make a SASI call to set drive parameters 
after each power-up.

Years ago I did considerable hacking on 1410s connected to an Apple 2. 
Probably still have a bunch of 6502 code for speaking to the drive.

Steve


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