From: gettys@regent.enet.dec.com (Bob Gettys)
Subject: Re: Is the maxtor 213 meg a good buy at $470?
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Date: 26 AUG 92 23:30:29    


In article <1992Aug25.203948.6150@bnlux1.bnl.gov>, thomas@bnlux1.bnl.gov (Richard A. Thomas) writes...
>jpl1@Ra.MsState.Edu (John Patrick Lestrade) writes:
>: I will also order a new controller card because mine does not have a 
>: "user-definable" drive type 47.  (mine is pre-defined)  But first
>: I will try to find a "close" type and see if I can get it to run --
>: with maybe the loss of a few megs.  any comments?
>: patrick
> 
>I just purchased a Maxtor 7213A IDE drive, and after staying up
>until 3 a.m., I have some questions.
> 
>I already had a Maxtor LXT-200A IDE drive and a Miniscribe IDE
>controller.
> 
>First question.  Both of these drives require that you use a
>user-defined type 47, and my AMI BIOS allows that.  What isn't
>clear is whether Type 47 has to be the same Type 47 for both drives.
>(Maxtor recommends different definitions since the 7213A holds about
>10 more MBytes.)  So does a BIOS allow Type 47 to mean different
>things for different disk drives?
> 
>2.  If the answer to 1. is ``yes'', is that ``yes, always'' or ``yes
>only if they are not hooked up as master and slave on the same IDE
>controller?
> 
>3.  I ended up making both Type 47s the same (the values recommended
>for the lower capacity LXT-200A).  I made the 7213A the master (factory
>default jumpers), and added a jumper to the LXT-200A to make it a slave.
>To keep the cluster size down to 2048 bytes, I made the 7213A a primary
>partition, "C:", and an extended partition with one logical drive, "D:".
>I made the LXT-200A one extended partition divided into two logical
>drives, "E:" and "F:".  Sometimes Ctrl-Alt-Del will boot up ok, but
>usually I get the message instructing me to insert a BOOT disk in drive A:
>and press any key.  I ignore inserting a boot disk and press any key and
>it boots fine.  (There is a long pause after the Ctrl-Alt-Del before it
>comes up with this message.)  What did I do wrong?  The controller is
>the one which came with the LXT-200A, would a newer IDE controller make
>a difference?
> 
>By the way, I wasn't getting anywhere until I connected each drive to
>the controller individually, as a master, and partitioned it and formatted
>it before reconnecting them together as master and slave.  When both
>were on the controller and the master (7213A) hadn't been partitioned and
>formated yet, it will usually report that it couldn't access disk 2, or
>sometimes that there was a HDD controller failure and couldn't access
>either of them.  These message went away after I connected each separately
>and partitioned and formated them.



	That is the configuration that I am running. And with no problems at
all. The older LXT213 happens to be the master (it was before) and the new
LXT7213 is the slave. I just connected it, fdisked it, formatted it, and used
it. My "controller" card is a cheap "do it all" multi i/o board that I've had
for about a 2 years. The type 47 issue is bios dependent, but every one I've
had direct experience with (that even had a type 47) actually has two spots in
the table for the drive parameters. What you are actually doing when you set it
up in the cmos is writing various parameter either from rom, or from the
keyboard into a table in cmos from which the bios takes its info during boot.
One set of values per disk, two disks, means two sets of values.

	/s/	Bob Gettys