My gateway 386 was unplugged too long type 46 hard drive nee

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David Lippert

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Aug 7, 2002
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:( I have an old but good 386 full of un backed CADD files. I left it unplugged too long and it forgot the hard drive numbers. It is a Microscience HH-1060 S/N 08216 301 and has 5 heads 1024 cyl Pre Comp 1024 Rll. I need to specify LZ and Sectors
I remember that it was about 60 0r 62 0r 67 mb
I also remember that it is really a 42 meg drive tweeked to give more starage.
I would like very much to be able to get this system up again.
Thank you for your help
 
Landing zone will be 1024, and doesn't actually matter if you get it wrong.

Sectors ... mmmmm ... Hang on a tic, I'll ask Tannin.

Yup. He says all MFM drives had 17 sectors per track. With a RLL controller, that jumps to one of two or three higher figures. 26 SPT was common, 35 less common. Try it with 26. Odds are two to one in your favour, and so long as you don't attempt to write to the drive until you know it's right, you won't do any harm.
 
Still no joy On :( On all of the 45 preset drive parameters I get incorrect configuration in cmos. In some I also get Hard drive failed initialization.
I get hard drive failed initilization at 27 sectors and above
Just in case this matters I had a Y2K problem too because I forgot and set the clock. I had to run down the battery again using a LONG piece of wire (I know a jeweler who shorted a watch battery and lost one eye) so DO NOT use a short wire. Then I was able to turn the clock back and it went in to 2002 and all, but the day of the week was wrong. After a LOT of trials of drive parameters I tried to set the clock to 1988 but it Y@K ed again when i went up to 2010 so I ran the battery down again so the arrows would work again. Now My 386 is back in 1988 I hope. I do not know if any of this would keep the hard drive from working. I also tried using less than 1024 tracks. somehow 62 0r 63 meg sounds about right
Thanks again.
 
Here is a reference for CHS values for a Microscience HH-1060 Hardware Bible Cyclinders=1024, Heads=5, Sectors=26.

Amazing what a google search for Microscience HH-1060 will turn up.
 
Thanks Mark I tried Heads 5 Cyl 1024 pre 1024 lz 1024 sec26 I get wrong data in cmos but not hard disk failed initilization. I do not know if hard disk failed initialazation is a clue that some parameters aer close to the propper setting or if it is a clue that not only is there wrong information in cmos but also the hard disk failed initialization. anyway I may be looking for a hard disk and a way to put it in to get it to run again. There is an off chance the notes may turn up in my moving boxes if i ever unpack the right one. by the way i have tried a zillion different parameters in case they chose to use less than all the tracks or a different preset. However i am doing this on instint not knowledge so I may be missing somthing. I will look at your reference. thanks.
:) :(
 
Try Seagate's NFDisc

From their website:
Provides information about the Partition Table record stored on the boot track of each hard disc drive. NFDisc displays this information with an emphasis on the Cylinder, Head and Sector parameters that were used in creating the tables. Optional save of sector data to a file for later reference.
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ftp://ftp.seagate.com/techsuppt/seagate_utils/nfdisc12.exe

The output of NFdisc is a little ... er ... cryptic. Have fun figuring it out!
 
Is it possible that the sectors have been remapped by one of those dreadful bootloader products that Ontrack and others made?

I dunno, prehistoric hardware is not really my forte.
 
:oops: Now I can not get drive B to work. Drive A is a 5.25 and boots Dos 5 from a floppy drive B i think was a 1.44 anyway i tried both settings and Either I am not typing in the right thing or somthing is wrong. I get A> and I type in B:\ and enter Do I type nf disc12? whatever I type I get general failure reading drive B. I get this also with my Norton Commander disc. It has been five years scince I made any discs with this computer so I may have forgotten how.
 
Your B: drive may have died, David. Maybe it would be best to plug your 5.25 inch A: drive into another machine and copy the program over onto it from there. Don't use your good, working boot disc! Use a spare one. Before you do that though, I think you'll find that the Seagate download is a self-extracting zip file. Copy it to a folder on your Windows machine (or anything that can run a DOS prompt) and run it there. It will probably extract itself to nfdisc.exe and readme.txt, or something like that. Been a while since I used it, I can't remember exactly. There is documentation in there somewhere. I remember that much.
 
The hard drive parameters sound right to me (and Mark has now confirmed it beyond doubt), but I figured Tea would be the only one amongst us to have touched one of these in the last 14 years.

I'm not sure I understand exactly what you are doing. Why are you discharging the battery rather than removing it or otherwise disconnecting it? Has it occurred to you that batteries don't like being shorted out? :)

Are you getting the error messages when you restart? If so, you may have creamed the battery, and the basic chipset settings are corrupted each time you power off. More is stored in CMOS than what you can see through the BIOS setup.

I would change the battery. No, that's a lie. I would find the nearest appropriate receptacle. :)
 
One thing to remember about MFM/RLL drives is that the parameters are not set by the drive as such, but rather by the drive controller - so, if you happen to have a 35 SPT controller in your machine (just for example) then 35SPT is what you need.
 
I replaced the B drive with a Sony I had and that works fine now. This violates my rule of only one thing breaks at a time. But maybe my old B drive was not bad just of an early type. :-? I made a few calls and I found one of those wonderful places with bins of hard drives for $5 each. I also need a different controller card as my original one uses a floppy cord to the hard drive along with a smaller ribbon cable. I am toying with using a different slot on the motherboard and leaving my original card in just in case i can ever get my original hard drive to work. The first time I tried this nothing connected to the card worked. However this card has a 25 pin female (jp11) and a 15 pin female (jp8) out the back of the computer, and a 9 pin male and a 25 pin male on another strip out of the back of the computer. (jp9 and jp10) which is which I do not know)I have no clue what these are for. In addition I am guessing that the red stripe goes on the side where the jpxx is but that is my guess.
I am thinking that this is way over my head and maybe i ought to haul it all in and let that guy work on it before i really muck it up. I am worried that because this 386 is a rare layout (it has all its main memory on an expansion card and cpu speed memory on the motherboard, Perfect for GAD scresn redraws in 3 to 11 seconds, not 30 seconds like my pentium 3.
\Anyway when I tried the controller in the original slot the screen goes blank if a hard drive is plugged in. and i did not get the 5.25 to work.
 
David Lippert said:
This violates my rule of only one thing breaks at a time.
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You need to get a new rule. :)

But maybe my old B drive was not bad just of an early type. :-?
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There has only ever been one type of 3.5" FDD sold outside of Japan (ignoring the double vs high density aspect). It is an old design.

I made a few calls and I found one of those wonderful places with bins of hard drives for $5 each. I also need a different controller card as my original one uses a floppy cord to the hard drive along with a smaller ribbon cable.
Click to expand...
You are getting out of your depth fast.

The first time I tried this nothing connected to the card worked. However this card has a 25 pin female (jp11) and a 15 pin female (jp8) out the back of the computer, and a 9 pin male and a 25 pin male on another strip out of the back of the computer. (jp9 and jp10) which is which I do not know)
Click to expand...
25-pin female = parallel (printer)
25-pin male = serial (probably Com2)
9-pin male = serial (probably Com1)
15-pin female = joystick (probably)

I have no clue what these are for. In addition I am guessing that the red stripe goes on the side where the jpxx is but that is my guess.
Click to expand...
I was going to say that I have no clue what "jpxx" means, but then I realized you meant JP1 etc. You are almost certainly correct. They should all have the same orientation.

I am thinking that this is way over my head and maybe i ought to haul it all in and let that guy work on it before i really muck it up. I am worried that because this 386 is a rare layout (it has all its main memory on an expansion card and cpu speed memory on the motherboard ...
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Firstly, it is not at all unusual for 386 architecture. Secondly, if you actually pay someone money to work on this antique, you need a different kind of help. :)

Anyway when I tried the controller in the original slot the screen goes blank if a hard drive is plugged in. and i did not get the 5.25 to work.
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This is the cue that some of us here would take to say: "Talking about old computers is fun but working with them is not."

There's more than enough technical expertise here to aid sick computers, but few would advocate raising the dead. I'd love to help you with any future advice or assistance, but my best counsel here is to let this one go. :wink:
 
The two-cable controller is an RLL controller, David. It would have been used to format your Microscience hard drive in the first place, and you need to use it and no other if you want to be able to access the data on it. (Unless you can find another similar one that uses an identical format method.) Using a different controller will require that you low level format the Microscience.

You can't have an RLL or MFM controller and an IDE (40-pin) controller in the same system, unless you have an intelligent IDE controller - and these were so rare that I don't think I have ever seen one. So, to get the data off you have to use a SCSI drive, or LapLink, or a parallel port drive, or a network, or (if all else fails) floppies.
 
:D What do you know I found the right place to take it. In case you are anywhere near Cleveland, Budget PC 2535 Scranton RD. (216)566-1406
John han me up and running right away. He replaced the battery. and that fixed it. :D You told me right.
Now I have to work on getting the files transfered.
I have an external scsi Zip drive How would I put in aScsi card? I mean would I need to get the bios happy with it?
You mentioned a parallel port drive What is that exactly?
 
No problem. Drop in any time, with or without computer problems.

BTW, I must apologize. I didn't absorb what you said in your first post about unbacked-up files. :oops: I'll go and sit in the corner now.
 
:D Thank you to all of you! In spite of my stupidity I did not screw it up and Everything you told me was right on. Now I am looking for an ISA adaptec 8 bit SCSI adapter card. Maybe Ebay?
In college I worked my way by refrigerator and large appliance repair. Lots of times I got a condemmed machine in to the shop that some major brand repairman said had a major problem. Because we could only make a profit if it was some cheap problem we looked for those first. 9 times out of ten it was say the refrigerator door lite switch or the relay. both simple and less than $3 but both will display the symptoms of a bad compressor.
:oops: I was aware the battery was questionable because there was corrosion on one end. I figured it was bad, and did not worry if I ruined it altogether. I thought it was somthing I could deal with easily. Then I failed to fix the cheap thing I knew needed fixing and made the mistake of worrying about the disasterous thing that I could not do anything about.
Thanks again for getting me on the right track.
The guy only charged $ 10 for his time and the battery. I had vissions of somone rescuing some of the files but leaving me with no syston old enough to be compatable with my antique software that I already know. The Autocad program was discounted at $ 1000 in 1990 and a compatable new copy would cost many times that now.
:D So I am smiling
PS if you are wondering what I am writing check out my web site www.borntalking.com I am encouraging Expectant families to contact me. at this time I have a few free copies of my book to distribute to those that will use them. I am still hoping to get published, and a lot of letters from mothers saying that they used my book and the results were better than they expected, etc. would help. anyway I am mailing out a few books in exchange for contact information. Date of expected birth, phone number and adderess and email.
Those that read the book find their newborn using a three-word vocabularymany times a day at two or three months, some use three-word sentences at five months and a sixty-word vocabulary at one year.
Thanks and Goodbye for now
 
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