Readme File For Caviar Drives
AC2540/AC2700/AC31000
06/17/94
Please read the appropriate section(s) in this file before attempting
installation of your Caviar drive.
Section 1. IBM PS/1 and PS/Value Point Computers.
Section 2. Gateway 2000 VESA Local Bus systems.
Section 3. Gateway 2000 PCI Bus Pentium systems.
Section 4. Gateway 2000 PCI Bus 486 systems.
Section 5. Using Windows 32-Bit Disk Access with Enhanced IDE drives.
Section 6. DMA Mode Problems on PCI Machines
Section 7. Using Windows For Workgroups 32-Bit File Access.
Section 8. Disk Capacities: Mega bytes versus Million bytes
Section 9. AST Desktop Systems With Translating BIOS
Section 10. Installing OS/2 2.1 On Drives with More Than 503Mb Capacity
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Section 1.
Special Information for Owners of IBM PS/1 and PS/Value Point Computers.
IBM 386SLC based systems
Some models of these systems will not support drives with more than
1,024 cylinders (528 Million bytes which equals 504 Megabytes). This is
a limitation of the system BIOS in these machines. The systems in question
are primarily 386SLC based computers. In these models, the maximum capacity
you will obtain from a drive that has more than 1,024 cylinders is the
following:
AC2540 12.3 Megabytes
AC2700 202.3 Megabytes
AC31000 26.8 Megabytes
It is not possible to circumvent this limitation using the Disk Manager
software.
In order to determine if you have such a machine prior to installation of the
Caviar drive, you can use the DOS debug program to examine the system model
identification bytes. In order to do this do the following.
From the DOS prompt enter
debug <ENTER>
You will then see the debug "hyphen" prompt, a -
at the hypen prompt enter
d F000:FFFE <ENTER>
You will see the following display:
F000:FFF0 F8 30
enter the following to exit debug at the hypen prompt:
q <ENTER>
If the numbers on the right side of the display match those above
(i.e., F8 30) then you have one of the machines that will not support
the drive.
IBM 486 based systems
These systems will support drives with up to 1,024 cylinders. It is not
possible to obtain full capacity on some 486 models because of the way these
machines cloak, or hide from view, the hard disk registers. This prevents
Disk Manager from "seeing" the drive.
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Section 2.
Special Information for Owners of Gateway 2000 VESA Local Bus systems.
If your Phoenix BIOS revision level is below 4.03, you may not be able
to properly install any drive with more than 1,024 cylinders in your system.
This situation requires a BIOS upgrade. Micro Firmware of Norman Oklahoma
sells Phoenix BIOS upgrades that will permit the drive to function properly
in these machines. They can be reached at 405-321-8333.
In order to allow the drive to function correctly, albeit at reduced capacity,
you must *manually* enter the following drive parameters instead of using
the "AUTO CONFIGURE" option in the CMOS setup.
Type Cylinders Heads Sectors Per Track Capacity
User definable 1,023 16 63 503MB
IMPORTANT! DO NOT use "AUTO CONFIGURE" to set up a WD drive that has more
than 1,024 cylinders if you have a VESA Local Bus System. Choose User Definable
instead.
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Section 3.
Gateway 2000 PCI Bus Pentium systems.
The Gateway P5-60, P5-66, and P5-90 systems have a BIOS that will support
the AC2540/AC2700/AC31000 drives at full capacity. In order to accomplish
this, the CMOS drive typr MUST be set to "AUTOCONFIGURE". In the Advanced
CMOS Setup option screen, "LBA Translation" should be "Enabled".
Type Cylinders Heads Sectors Per Track Capacity
AUTOCONFIGURE 1,048 16 63 516MB
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Section 4.
Gateway 2000 PCI Bus 486 systems.
The Gateway P4D-33, P4D-66, and P4D-100 systems also support the
AC2540/AC2700/AC31000 drives at full capacity. In order to accomplish
this , the CMOS drive type MUST be set to "AUTO TYPE". In the Advanced CMOS
Setup option screen, "LBA Translation" should be "Enabled".
Type Cylinders Heads Sectors Per Track Capacity
AUTOTYPE 1,048 16 63 515MB
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Section 5.
Using Windows 32-Bit Disk Access with Enhanced IDE drives.
If you are using Windows v3.1 or Windows For Work Groups 3.11, you will
not be able to use the built-in 32-Bit Disk Access driver named *WDCTRL.
This is due to the fact that this driver was written prior to the
introduction of Enhanced IDE drives and it therefore does not recognize
drives with more than 1,024 cylinders. Included on this diskette is
a replacement driver, WDCDRV.386, which will provide 32-Bit Disk Access
on Western Digital Enhanced IDE drives.
However, be aware that some third party software can interfere with
32-Bit Disk Access. Below is a partial list of software that has been
identified as having an adverse impact on 32-Bit Disk Access drivers.
There may be other software that prevents WDCDRV.386 from loading.
The following lists some of the more common reasons why WDCDRV.386
may refuse to load, or may lock up the system in Windows 3.1 and Windows
For Workgroups 3.11.
1. HIGHSCAN is present on emm386.exe command line.
Remove the HIGHSCAN option.
2. There is another Virtual Device Driver (VxD) loaded in system.ini, or
a DOS device driver loaded in config.sys, that is also talking
directly to the hard disk drive. This includes but is not limited to
the following:
* VL-bus IDE controllers with drivers.
* PCI-bus IDE controllers with drivers.
such as DTC2130.SYS and DOSEIDE.SYS for Gateway 2000
PCI Bus Computers.
* symevnt.386 from Symantec's Norton Desktop and
the Norton Utilities version 8.0.
In order for WDCDRV.386 to work, you must remove the other drivers from
the system.ini and/or config.sys files.
3. DOS Undelete is in use (it uses Int 26h).
Do not use UNDELETE.
4. "NoEMMDriver=ON " in system.ini causes 32BDA driver to lockup
and will prevent 32-Bit FIle Access from working
in Windows For Workgroups 3.11.
You may have other software that *requires* this entry. However you
must check the documentation for your other software to determine
what impact removing this line will have on your system.
5. QEMM in Stealth mode must be setup as follows
device=qemm386.sys RH:N SH:N XBDA:L
or
device=qemm386.sys ST:M
must be changed to
device=qemm386.sys ST:m
Stealth mode moves certain data into high memory changing the address
at which this data is located. This makes it impossible for the 32BDA
driver to find this data and prevents it from loading.
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Section 6.
DMA Mode Problems
If DMA mode was selected but the IDE channel does not support DMA, the
system will lock-up. To prevent this, you must set the DMAFlag=Off
option in the [WDCDRV] section of your system.ini file.
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Section 7.
Using Windows 32-Bit File Access.
Windows 32-Bit File Access will not load if there is a file open when you
start Windows For Workgroups. Some TSR programs will maintain an open file
for such things as Print caching (the program PrintCache does this), or
virus checking.
Windows 32-Bit File Access will not load if there is disk compression in
use. 32-Bit File Access can be made to work with Stacker 4.0 and Doublespace 6.2
by replacing the line
device=*BLOCKDEV
with the following two lines
device=ios.386
device=VxDLdr.386
in the [386Enh] section of system.ini. In addition, the file RMM.D32,
the Real Mode Memory Mapper, must exist in the \WINDOWS\SYSTEM subdirectory.
The line
device=C:\WINDOWS\ifshlp.sys
must exist in the config.sys file and the file ifshlp.sys must exist in
the Windows subdirectory.
The line
NoEMMDriver=ON
must NOT appear in the [386Enh] section of system.ini as it will prevent
RMM.D32 from loading which will prevent 32-Bit File Access from loading.
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Section 8. Disk Capacities: Megabytes versus Million Bytes
ALL drive manufacturers state and advertise capacity in Millions of Bytes.
Some utility software will state drive capacity in what is called binary
millions (1,024 squared which is a Megabyte), while some software will state
drive capacity in decimal millions (1,000 squared). FDISK and the CMOS will
use Megabytes (1,048,576) while CHKDSK uses millions of bytes.
For example, an AC2540 at full capacity will be described by FDISK and the
CMOS as having a capacity of 516Mb: this is equal to 540.3 million bytes,
which is what CHKDSK would report.
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Section 9. AST Desktop Systems With Translating BIOS
In order to obtain full capacity with an AC2540/AC2700/AC31000 drive the
system BIOS must support some form of translation in order to accomodate
the number of cylinders these drive have.
The following AST desktop systems support CHS to CHS translation. All these
systems have AST FlashBIOS support so that they may be field upgraded using
a BIOS upgrade disk from AST. The BIOS Revision column indicates the first
BIOS revision released by AST which supports CHS to CHS translation.
System BIOS Revision
Premmia 2.00
Premmia MTE 2.00
Premmia SE 2.00
Premmia LX P/60 (AMI BIOS) -
Premmia Business Multimedia 2.00
Bravo LP 1.01
Bravo LC 1.01
Bravo LC Business Multimedia 1.01
Bravo MT 1.01
Advantage! Pro (Bravo LC) 1.01
Advantage! Plus (Bravo MT) 1.01
Advantage! Adventure (Bravo LC) 1.01
Advantage! Adventure 486DX266mt (Bravo MT) 1.01
Advantage! EXP/60 (AMI BIOS) -
The AST Technical Support numbers is (714)727-9630 and (800)727-1278. The
AST BBS telephone number to obtain AST FlashBIOS upgrades are
(714)727-4132.
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Section 10. Installing OS/2 2.1 On Drives with More Than 503Mb Capacity
There is a problem installing OS/2 on drives with more than 503Mb. This is due
to a bug in OS/2 that won't allow it to boot from a partition larger than 503MB
(528 million bytes). OS/2 will not install into or boot from a partition larger
than 503MB. The following information will allow you to install and boot OS/2.
1 - During the install process, your are asked to accept or define the
partition to install OS/2. CHOOSE DEFINE PARTITION, this will
run OS/2's FDISK utility.
2 - Define the primary partition to be less than 503MB. Set the remaining
disk space to an extended partition. (Normally the remaining free
space is set to an extended partition or other configuration as
desired).
3 - Set the primary partition to installable.
4 - Exit FDISK utility and follow the prompt to replace the floppy disk in
drive A and reboot the PC.
5 - The installation should now continue normally.
NOTE: If you initially tried to setup the whole disk as one bootable OS/2
partition, you will get a big red screen (INSTALL ERROR) from disk 1.
Solution:
- Boot DOS and run the DOS FDISK utility.
- Check the current partition data using option 4, DISPLAY PARTITION.
- If it shows 516MB and a file system (FAT or HPFS), go back to the main
FDISK menu and choose option 3, DELETE A PARTITION OR DRIVE.
- From the next menu choose option 4, DELETE A NON-DOS PARTITION, and
delete the OS/2 partition.
- Exit DOS's FDISK utility, and reboot to the OS/2 installation diskette
and continue at step 1.
In order to get the additional drive space formatted (13MB) in the
extended partition, you will need to format that drive using
the HPFS file system. (DOS's FAT16 file system is not supported
because this drive will start above cylinder 1023.)
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End of File Readme.cav
