Sparta PCBoard Hard Drive Conference PERSTOR Conference (201) 729-7056 The following text was prepared by Darwin Collins at my request so that you could have some first hand feedback on installation of the co-resident driver to allow two Perstor 200 series controllers to be installed in the same computer. I have reviewed the procedures used and described by Darwin and find them to be succinct, straight forward and very clear. Darwin, my thanks for preparing the text file. Richard Driggers Sysop - Sparta PCBoard March 12, 1988 Created :03/12/88 An installers view on what it took to get an XT system to recognize Four (4) HardDisk drives using two Perstor PS180 controllers. Equipment: 2 New Perstor PS180 Controllers 2 New Miniscribe 3425 20Meg(MFM) Drives 1 IBM Turbo XT Clone 640K RAM 150Watt Power Supply (about 2+yrs old) 1 AST 2Meg RamPage board configured as 1 Meg RAMDrive and 1 Meg Extended RAM 2 Seagate ST238 30Meg(RLL) Drives 1 Expansion Case with 60watt Power Supply (This case cost us $100, but next time we will buy a clone XT case and buy a Power Supply for it. The reason this case was bought was to move the Hot running ST238 drives out of the XT case.) 2 30Pin Cables (2 Drive Twisted Pair Cables) 4 20Pin Cables (one for each drive) Misc parts: Screws to hold in the HardDrives. Manual: The supplied manual that came with the controllers Preliminary Documentation for the 4-Drive Device Driver Software: OnTrack's DiskManager vr 3.1 IBM DOS 3.1 Recommendation: Our system had two ST238's online for about a year. About 6 months ago, we bought an expansion case to move the Hot running drives out of the XT case. We had 2 Miniscribe 3425 that were in storage because normally it is not possible to hook more than 2 drives up concurrently. Thus, for us, the Perstor Controllers were perfect ! We could install the two Miniscribes into the XT case, keep the Seagates in their Expansion Case, plug the two controllers in, and be running upto 4 Harddrives concurrently. Currently, we can not use a disk cache but we are so happy that we can access upto 4 drives, that spring time is fine for waiting for the official release of the PS180 device driver. Problems: We had bought two controller cards, so had two sets of manuals. One of the manuals had blank pages in the essential areas of setting the jumpers. So, this could have caused a problem, if we had had only one manual that had those blank pages. We are running a AST 2Meg Rampage board also in the system. We could not get a Disk Cache program from Mace Utilities to work. If this was caused by the drivers in the Rampage board interfering with the PS180 driver, and resulting in the lockups when Mace's disk cache was used, I don't know. If Mace's disk cache is not used, the system runs fine. If it is used, then the system will lock up sooner or later while accessing any of the Harddrives. ==== What we did ===== Before: The XT system had two 30Meg ST238's hooked up to a Adaptec 2070A that provided 60Megs of storage. step 1 - Hooked up a Tape Backup mechanism to backup the data off of the two ST238's. (Took a long time using an Irwin 10Meg Tape Drive) - Powered down the XT system - Disconnected the cables from the Adaptec controller so to remove the controller from the system. (This controller was hooked upto two ST238s, which were housed in an external expansion box.) - Picked up 1 Perstor controller card, and accompying manual. For our drives) we needed to remove all jumpers from the JMP6 block except for the one that was across pins 13 & 14. Checked to make sure the jumper was on the JMP4 block. Checked to make sure that there was No jumper on the JMP5 block. - Inserted this controller card into the XT system and connected the Harddrives cables to it. (The connecting of the cables is similar as hooking up other types of Harddisk controllers) Double checked, to see that the Pin 1 of the ports and the Red Edge of the Cables matched. step 2 - Stuck a system diskette into the floppy drive and turned On the XT system. Before, bootup, a message appeared saying that the two Harddrives had not been low-level formatted yet. (A verbal sentence, instead of the 1701 that other's display.) - After bootup, we removed system disk, and inserted the PS180 utility diskette that came with the controller cards. - Typed PS2FMT , which is a program that will low level format the drives. You would need to use this program once for each drive, so which is twice. - We used an interleave of 4, and got a Data Transfer rate of about 200 or so. The program was very informative and we had no problem in telling it to low-level the drive. Repeated the procedure to low-level format the other drive. - Loaded OnTrack's Disk Manager into the system, and accessed it by DM/M to partition and high-level format both drives with each a 40Meg partition. Didn't have any problems with using Disk Manager to partition the drives. step 3 - After setting up both drives with their 40meg partitions, and exiting DM, we powered down the system. - We disconnected the data cables that ran from the two ST238s to the controller. Disconnected the power plug that ran to the external expansion case that housed the two ST238s. - Installed the two Miniscribe 3425's into the XT system's 2 vacant half-height slots. - Connected the two-drive cables from the two Miniscribes to the PS180 controller. - Repeated the same procedure (Steps 2 to 3) that we had used to low-level format the two ST238s. ( Except for that we partitioned the first Drive (0), has a 20Meg DOS (Logical C:) and a 20Meg (Logical D:). ) - Powered down the system. Left the Data cables hooked upto the two Miniscribes. - Took the second controller out of the box. For us, we took all jumpers off the JMP6 block except for the one that was across pins 13 & 14. - Took the jumper off of JMP4 block and put it on the JMP5 block. (again, result: No jumper on JMP4, Yes jumper on JMP5) (Result of this is dis-enabling the BIOS, and selecting a different Port address.) - Inserted the card into the system, and connectted the data cables that ran from the two ST238 Harddrives. Double checked, to see that the Pin 1 of the ports and the Red Edge of the Cables matched. Plugged the power for the expansion case back into the switch box. - Powered up the system, with a system diskette. After bootup, we changed the config.sys, to reflect this: DEVICE=DMDRVR.BIN DEVICE=PS200IO.BIN DEVICE=ANSI.SYS FILES=20 BUFFERS=14 ...etc. Copied and then verified that the Device Drivers were available on the system diskette. - Rebooted the system. Upon booting up, the screen will display the the Perstor Device Driver has found and recognized the additional 2 drives. - Copied all device drivers and the config.sys over to the HardDisk Drive C: And did other checks to make sure that all drives (and logical drives) were being accessed normally and correctly. - It is recommended that before you restore your data, to run a Harddisk analyzer to check for any bad sectors. (Just to play it safe) - Store the booting system disk for backup purposes. (for a time, that you accidently wipe out your root directory, you would have a bootable system diskette so that you can easily restore your device drivers.) - That was it. We rebooted the system up, and accessed all FOUR Harddisks for a total of 160 Megabytes of data. Before with a maximum of 2 Drives : 2 drives x 30meg(RLL) = 60 Megs After with 4 Drives and using ARLL : 4 drives x 40Meg(ARLL) = 160 Megs Summary: It took us about 13 hours from start to finish. I estimate that by far the majority of the time was spent backing up 60Megs of Data from the (then) two 30meg drives. Time was also spent waiting for the system to format the 4 Harddrives and partition them. We had no problems with understanding the documentation. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ If you have any further questions or problems that we can help you with, we can be located at: Ken Bachman Sysop of Silicon City RBBS data (214) 641-2537 Darwin Collins Irving, Texas Home (214) 252-5681 Author of a few (worthless?) Doorgames and this text --- the end ---