Plus Development Hardcard (10 MB ISA 8 bit)

[lynchaj]

Hi,
I have a Plus Development Hardcard, 10 MB and fits in an 8 bit ISA slot. I think it may be the original device from 1985 judging from the chip date codes and the total lack of any other descriptive information on it.

After finally getting my XT board working, I am trying out the hardcard and it is having troubles formatting. I am able to get FDISK to recognise the hardcard as drive #1 if I set the *only* configuration jumper to PC (versus XT). Apparently, setting the jumper to XT makes the hardcard appear as the secondary hard disk controller. I was able to use FDISK to partition the drive successfully, as best I can tell.

When I try to format the drive, however, it refuses to format since track 0 is bad. Usually this is the death knell of hard disks and I fully expect this drive is toast as well. However, I may be able to low level format the drive and improve it.

Does anyone have the software for the Plus Development Hardcard (original) to do the low level formatting?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Andrew Lynch

[Druid6900]

Andrew, does it have a ROM-based formating routine (if it has a ROM)?

It's usually at c800:5 from debug.

If so, you can probably start the format at track 1 instead of track 0. The drive doesn't care where it starts.

BTW Plus was bought out by Quantum, so, you might find some info down that path.

[lynchaj]

Hi Richard,

I tried the quantum website but they have no mention of the hardcard. Quite ironic considering that it was the Plus Development claim to fame. I remember it well when they came out. The hardcard is a nice device but I suspect this one is dead.

Tomorrow I will try to get the ROM LL format approach to work. Maybe the drive is just out of it a little bit and a new LL format will bring it back. Exposure to very strong magnetic fields can screw up hard drive formatting so who knows what can happen. 1985 was a long time ago...

Thanks!

Andrew Lynch

[Micom 2000]

I have a Plus40 hardcard that has been sitting amongst my "stuff" for over 10 years waiting to be installed in My Zenith XT luggable with the pop-up floppies and the "barebones" MB (I forget the terminology but it means even the CPU is on a card) as well as a "monitor" in the BIOS, like in PS/2s. I love that machine but just haven't used it for some time. I just did a search of my HDs but remember seeing the 51/4 floppy recently I was sure I had it backed up on several HDs (aarrggghh). Chances are that tne hardcard no longer works but possibly the floppy has something on it that might help. I'll get back to you when I search thru my floppies. Someone recently mentioned that one should heat up an old HD before trying it.
Presumably that would melt any old grease on moving parts.

Maxtor took over Quantum which had taken over Plus. Possibly Maxtor has some info. A Google search under Computer Hardcard also came up with a MS reference to a bug in formatting hardcards. It mentions a program called atplus and how to use it when formatting hardcards.

Lawrence

[lynchaj]

Hi,

Well, good news sort of. I was able to use the IBM diagnostics disk to do a low level format of the Hardcard. The ROM LL formatter approach did not work, unfortunately, but the Hardcard is close enough to the IBM original standard that the diagnostic disk was able to do it.

With the newly LL formatted disk, I was able to FDISK and FORMAT the drive. There still were some bad sectors detected during the format which tells me there are enough bad sectors on the drive that it filled the bad sectors list remapping zone on the drive and some escaped.

One idea is to run SPINRITE on the drive and see if that helps but I have heard that SPINRITE does not work well or at all on real Plus Development Hardcards. Is that true?

Lawrence, if you would please look through your disks to see if you have the original utilities for the Hardcard, I would much appreciate it. I searched online but did not find any of their utilities in the archives. Quantum/Maxtor/Seagate or whatever megacorporation bought the hardcard's IP doesn't seem to recall they ever made the unit which is a shame.

Thanks in advance!

Andrew Lynch

PS, I dug through my pile of stuff and found SpinRite II. I can confirm it does not work on the Hardcard. It is running on the other hard disk I was able to make work. The good news is that the other hard drive is one I thought was a "goner" but on the new repaired XT it is behaving nicely. It is a CMI model 5619 and an old one at that. It LL formatted, FDISK, and FORMAT worked fine. Now SpinRite II is scrubbing it down looking for problems. Nice to see something come back from the junk pile.

[Trixter]

PS, I dug through my pile of stuff and found SpinRite II. I can confirm it does not work on the Hardcard. It is running on the other hard disk I was able to make work. The good news is that the other hard drive is one I thought was a "goner" but on the new repaired XT it is behaving nicely. It is a CMI model 5619 and an old one at that. It LL formatted, FDISK, and FORMAT worked fine. Now SpinRite II is scrubbing it down looking for problems. Nice to see something come back from the junk pile.

Usually the problem with Plus Hardcards is that the EEPROM fades long before the drives go bad. I have two hardcards like this, and without the EEPROM, the thing has no BIOS which means you can't boot it.

[Micom 2000]

I found the disk. It isn't the original Plus disk. I had placed the Plus files together with my Intel Inboard setup files in which I am using a Hardcard.

How can I get it to you ? I have an .img of the disk I made for another member. You can just sort out the 2.

Nice that you got your PMI working. I'm afraid of testing mine, tho it was working when I stored it. What is the IBM diagnostic disk you mention ?

Lawrence

[lynchaj]

I found the disk. It isn't the original Plus disk. I had placed the Plus files together with my Intel Inboard setup files in which I am using a Hardcard.

How can I get it to you ? I have an .img of the disk I made for another member. You can just sort out the 2.

[/quote

Thanks Lawrence! An image file would be fine or whatever is convenient for you. If you've already bundled them up, just send me whatever you sent the other guy. Thanks!

[quote]

Nice that you got your PMI working. I'm afraid of testing mine, tho it was working when I stored it. What is the IBM diagnostic disk you mention ?

Lawrence

The IBM advanced diagnostics disk tests the various hardware and one of those is for the fixed disk. That section of test includes a fixed disk format utility which is really a low level formatter. It worked like a champ for me!

Thanks!

Andrew Lynch

PS, I can send you an image of the IBM advanced diagnostics disk if you'd like. I think they are online someplace too.

[Druid6900]

The progression was, I believe, Quantum buys Plus Development, Quantum buys Conner, Maxtor buys Quantum, Seagate buys Maxtor.

Mitsubishi owns everything in the world.

[Vlad]

Conner Peripherals merged with Seagate in 1996 so roughly it went Maxtor buys Quantum then Seagate buys Maxtor. So Seagate owns whatever's left of Conner, Quantum and Maxtor. Finnis Conner was also a founding member of Seagate.

[vwestlife]

So Seagate owns whatever's left of Conner, Quantum and Maxtor.
MiniScribe, too; after declaring bankruptcy in 1990, they were bought out by Maxtor.