SCSI Quantum Fireball TM

[jimbo100]

I have obtained a couple of Quantum Fireball TM SCSI hard disks. They are marked as following;

2.0GB FBTMS 655-0435
Quantum Fireball TM 3.5 Series

One drive is 2100S TM21S03 Rev 03-B S300Z &
the other is 2100S TM21S03 Rev 04-B S300Z

Now I have plugged them into an Amiga A590 (rev 6.6) and Squirrel SCSI device and HDToolbox finds both devices without problems however when I go to read configurations it reads Manufacturers Name, Drive name and drive revision ok but comes up with a "Cannot read device size!"

I have tried with Kickstart 2.04 & 3.1, both have the same result.

I have searched the internet and can't find any info for cylinders, heads, blocks for tracks etc and any info I plug in always comes up with "Error 29 on write!"

What little info I can find is they are 2.1GB drives with a formatted capacity of 2168.8MB with 4,236,019 logical blocks, 4 physical heads and 2 physical disks.

Does anyone have any experience with these drives. Just want to be able to format and use with my Amiga's!

[Carcenomy]

Ewww, Fireballs... I've had a few Fireballs (never on an Amiga though ) and they tend to be just as the name suggests - good for a while then spontaneously fly apart...

[Zetr0]

An Amiga + old scsi RLL CHS controller and has a lot of issues with certain
types of Hard disk ide/scsi even if they are CHS compatible!

so here is a little on drive geometry

there are two co-existing types of hard disk geometry the manufactures method of Physcial and the computational of Logical.

You need to convert your PHYSICAL geomertry into a logica geometry (like the one below)

size is calticulated by:- (correct me if i am wrong here)

size = cyl * hds * sect * blks

heres a little more info on calculation and how to translate between physical and logical geometry

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/geom/geomLogical-c.html

and some more here

http://www.storagereview.com/guide20...omLogical.html

heres a logical geometry for your quantum

http://www.computerhope.com/hdquantu.htm#fireball

Fireball 2.1GB
size	2.1GB

cyl	4029

Hds	16

Sect	63

blks        512

doing the size calculation on it:

size (2,079,350,784) = cyl * hds * sect * blks

----------------------------------

Another method that one could employ is to remove the hdd and lump it into the PC and use WinUAE to set it up. of course in this case you would need to have a scsi host (card /device) installed on your PC.


anyways I hope this helps...