Sparta PCBoard Hard Disk Conference (201) 729-7056 12/24/96HST (201) 729-9409 Voice Support 6-9 PM Eastern November 23, 1987 This is the third file in our continuing updates on the Perstor line of Advanced RLL Hard Disk Controllers. This information may be posted on your bulletin board as you see fit. Please do not remove the above information concerning where people can call to get phone or voice support for the controller. 1. How to test a controller 2. Award bios problem, radial select 5. Experiences with Vfeature. 6. problem with itt atw machine 7. problem with pc's limited and ps200 8. problem with phoenix 2.27 bios in xt turbo mode etc. 9. 1) If you have any trouble getting your Perstor controller to boot, Please observe at IPL time as to whether you got the Perstor copyright message or not. This is the initial indication that there might be some kind of configuration problem or whether dumb me goofed up on the EPROM burning if you were furnished a custom BIOS. 2) For those of you running a Clone machine with an AWARD BIOS, this buds for you. The AWARD Bios has been found to be a highly compatible BIOS but it has one little idiosyncracy when hooking up only one drive to a Perstor controller. When running a SINGLE drive attached to the Perstor you MUST, I repeat, MUST jumper select all four drive select lines on the drive, i.e., also known as radial select. Now, what kind of problems might this present in the future. None! If you add a second drive to the controller, remove the four jumpers from the first drive and then re- jumper the first drive on Drive Select 1 as you would normally do. If you had originally hooked up two drives to the controller you would never see the above described problem at all. 3) I have not kept up with the changes and many updates to SpeedStor, but from what I have been told, Storage Dimensions is up to release 5.0 and Vfeature from Golden Bow is up to release 2.56. These two programs are compatible with and recognize the sector count for both the PS180 and PS200. 4) Since the release of Perstor.arc and Perstor1.arc there have been a few changes in distribution implemented by Perstor, Inc. First, they no longer distribute the disk compression software. Secondly, the BIOS eprom for the Perstor now has 16 different drive selections available. The one important thing you should know is that the 16 different drives are available in 4 jumper selectable tables of 4 entries each. This means that if your particular configuration was two different drives with unique head/cylinder counts, and they were not in the same table, then you are a likely candidate for a custom BIOS Eprom. It is very important to specify your drive configuration when ordering the Perstor. You must also be sure to specify if you want your dealer to furnish a BIOS in the XT and/or AT variety. 5) In order to satisfy the many different drive configurations available I am offering the following: Custom BIOS Chip - $15 Extra BIOS Chip - $15 Custom BIOS Chip - $25 if not bought at time of Controller Purchase. The above price is mucho bucks cheaper than Perstor charges. The price does not include shipping. If for any reason the BIOS chip does not work when you receive it, and the problem is found to be something I screwed up, I WILL PAY THE FREIGHT on any shipment of a BIOS sent to correct the problem. Otherwise the hauling is up to you. The extra shipment will be sent UPS Brown at my expense. Any other form of shipment will be your choice and will be charged to you. 6) Compatibility Report - The original Perstor.arc furnished compatibility information. Here is an update. Seagate ST251's have been found to work very well with the PS180 and PS200. There are several installations running them with the PS200 with very favorable results. The Perstor appears to not work at all with the ITT ATW - AT compatible machine. No other information on the ITT machines except this one. When installing the PS200 in a PCs Limited 286 machine, the controller was not recognized about every third cold boot of the machine. Changed the controller to a PS180 and it has performed flawlessly now for almost 3 months. This particular machine is owned by Dan Bair of the File Cabinet RBBS system in Pennsylvania and is handling a 10 node system. 7) Perstor will be releasing a 16 bit combination HD/Floppy controller for the AT in January, 1988. This controller will handle the world. Included in this "world" class controller will be support for: 5 1/4" 360K Floppy 5 1/4" 1.2 MB Floppy 3 1/2" 720K Floppy 3 1/2" 1.4MB Floppy The controller will also support the usual two hard drives. This will include support for up to 16 heads and cylinders up to 2048. If the drive table does not support your particular configuration, Ontrack Systems, the folks who wrote and distribute Disk Manager, is now offering a SuperProm for the ATs and AT Clones that have an extra BIOS socket. The SuperProm will plug into this socket and give you up to 256 drive table entries. Contact Ontrack Systems, Eden Prairie, MN, for details. 8) Sparta PCBoard is now offering quantity discounts to those ordering in quantities greater than 3 controllers. Please call for quantity pricing. Substantial savings can be achieved if you order at least 10 controllers. End of File