On Sun, 8 Mar 1998, Nathan Gelbard wrote:

> I was trying to install NetBSD 1.3 on my (labeled Maxtor, probed as
> Miniscribe) drive:
> 
> Miniscribe Corp 8051a, 40mb w/ 32kcache CHS=981,5,17
> 
> NetBSD 1.3 (the boot floppy) probes the controller fine, but
> refuses to see the disk. Linux 2.0.34, found it right away and
> is still working great (ack).
> 
> Any ideas why this would be?

First this is an "ancient" ide drive, circa 1989 - 1990.  There was 
little in the way of standards back then for IDE.  I remember my Western 
Digital drives not working with Miniscribe controllers and vice versa.  
In fact there also were XT - IDE drives at that time.  We fried a few of 
them trying to low - level format them, like we had to do to MFM & RLL 
drives.  I learned that highly technical term "You've toasted that 
drive" from Miniscribe's tech support after telling them we had low 
levelled one.  Anyone remember "g=c800:5" at the DOS debug prompt? ;-)

If you are having spin up and down problems like you are descibing I'd 
advise a different drive before you waste a lot of labor on this 
install.

diana

Diana Eichert
IT Manager
McKinley Paper Company
deeiche@mckinleypaper.com