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The Enhanced IDE/Fast-ATA FAQ

9 The user's net.resource guide

Contents of this section

There are a large number of FAQs and other resources on the net. Daniel Tauritz ( dtauritz@WI.LeidenUniv.NL ) no longer maintains his EIDE Mini-FAQ that contains a short but potentially useful list of available interfaces; it needs to be expanded and maintained---any takers? There is another, technically oriented, FAQ on ATA-2, EIDE etcetera by Hale Landis ( hlandis@ibm.net ). All of this and more can be found on

• ftp://ftp.wi.leidenuniv.nl/pub/faqs
• http://www.wi.leidenuniv.nl/ata

An incredible range of hardware related issues is addressed by the comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware FAQ, maintained by Ralph Valentino ( ralf@wpi.wpi.edu ). It can be found on comp.answers and the FAQ repository ftp://rtfm.mit.edu . It incorporates the world-famous 'Jumper FAQ' ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/pc-hardware-faq/part3 .

On the tangential subject of Windows for Workgroups' 32-bit file access, Mike McCormick ( m.mccormick2@genie.geis.com ) has a good FAQ, posted on comp.os.ms-windows.windows.setup and many other groups. It can also be found on comp.answers and therefore on rtfm.mit.edu as well.

Roedy Green's ( roedy@bix.com ) "PCI EIDE controller flaws" FAQ is included with his EIDE test program. The latter will test your system for the bugs that may arise if it has a CMD640 or RZ1000 interface chip (used on many pre-Triton Intel Pentium boards, for instance). With either of these, your data is in danger every day you postpone reading this.

The SimTel repository, the primary mirror of which is ftp://ftp.coast.net/SimTel or http://www.coast.net , contains an immense number of useful programs (PD, freeware and shareware). A tiny selection, all from /SimTel/msdos/diskutil/:

• ideinf10.zip (will determine the properties of your harddisk(s)--not a benchmark).
• 3drvs260.zip (gives support for 3 harddisks under DOS).
• dqwik211.zip (block mode driver).
• no_idle.zip (disables the auto-idle power saving feature of some harddrives).
• 1seagate.zip (specs for *all* Seagate harddrives).
• wasted15.zip (shows wasted space due to cluster size).
• presz111.zip (nondestructive partition resizer). r

A more manageable selection of useful utilities, drivers and information (this FAQ :-) can be found on

• ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/cl/clau/ide_ata
  (this represents the latest known location of Chung Y. Lau's famous wandering FTP site)
• ftp://ftp.rahul.net/pub/lps/hard-disk

SimTel has a copy of TheRef[TM] by F. Robert Falbo, a giant hardware reference; it is rather outdated, but fortunately you can access a more up to date copy on the web at http://theref.c3d.rl.af.mil .

Frank Pikelner ( frank@cs.yorku.ca ) has compiled an excellent, up to date list of >500MB harddisk and >4x CD-ROM drive specifications. You can access it through http://www.cs.yorku.ca/People/frank/Welcome.html .

9.1 The user's net.resource guide: I/O card drivers

DriversHQ http://www.drivershq.com is one of the most well known sources for drivers.

In Finland, someone got the immensely useful idea of setting up a site with all kinds of IDE card drivers. You can find it on ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/drivers/pc/disk/ide_ata . If you can't find a driver here and manage to pick it up somewhere else, please upload it. Help making the net work.

9.2 The user's net.resource guide: hardware manufacturers

• CMD
  http://www.cmd.com
• Conner
  http://www.conner.com
• Creative Labs
  http://www.creaf.com
  Among other, non EIDE related items, this site has drivers for the tertiary ATA/IDE port found on some SoundBlaster cards.
• DTC
  http://www.datatechnology.com
• Fujitsu
  http://www.fujitsu.com
• Hewlett-Packard
  http://www.hp.com
• IBM
  http://www.storage.ibm.com/storage
  ftp://hddtech.millcomm.com
  http://www.pc.ibm.com (PC Company)
• Iomega
  http://www.iomega.com
• Maxtor
  http://www.maxtor.com
  ftp://ftp.maxtor.com
  All files from their BBS are on the FTP site, including biosbnch.zip, a benchmarking utility; greendrv.zip, to set the sleep mode timer on 'green' drives; and the latest version of MaxBlast (OnTrack Disk Mananager) at http://www.maxtor.com/readme/dm.html .
• Promise
  http://www.promise.com
  ftp://ftp.promise.com
  support@promise.com
  This site doesn't only contain drivers for Promise products but also for clone cards such as the VG4.
• Quantum
  http://www.quantum.com
  No official FTP site, although drivers to use Quantum's large harddisks with a non-translating BIOS can be found in ftp://ftp.rahul.net/pub/lps/hard-disk/ide_dos.exe . This is NOT an official Quantum support site and may disappear. This site contains miscellaneous storage-related programs and information too, not least the white papers on topics such as S.M.A.R.T., PRML channels, MR heads and more: http://www.quantum.com/products/whitepapers/ .
• Seagate
  ftp://ftp.seagate.com
  http://www.seagate.com
  This includes specifications of ALL Seagate drives, including detailed diagrams/pictures. The Seagate 32-bit disk access driver is available as ftp://ftp/seagate.com/techsuppt/sea32bit.exe ; there is a FAQ on this driver at http://www.seagate.com/techsuppt/win32drv.html . There is some general technical information available, on topics such as MR heads: http://www.seagate.com/new/sep96/mr_techp.shtml . A formatting utility for Seagate drives, sgatfmt4, is also available.
• Tekram
  http://www.tekram.com
• Tyan
  http://www.tyan.com
• Western Digital
  ftp://ftp.wdc.com
  http://www.wdc.com
  Many drivers and utilities, some of which won't work if you don't have at least one WD Caviar drive in your system. Goodies to be found: a good Windows FastDisk driver in /drivers/hdutil/win31.exe; a Windows helpfile explaining Enhanced IDE in /docs/eide.exe; a utility to examine the Enhanced DPT of your BIOS: /drivers/hdutil/chkbios.com.
• Winbond
  http://ntwww.winbond.com.tw
  Drivers are in the /DNLOAD/ directory.

9.3 The user's net.resource guide: software and BIOS houses

• AMI
  http://www.megatrends.com
  ftp://ftp.megatrends.com
• Award
  http://www.award.com
• IBM
  http://www.ibm.com
  http://www.pc.ibm.com (PC Company)
  http://ps.boulder.ibm.com (a really good link for OS/2 install and update info)
  ftp://ftp.pc.ibm.com
  Flash BIOS upgrades for the IBM ValuePoints are in /pub/valuepnt/.
• MicroHouse
  http://www.microhouse.com
  Drive specifications and jumper settings: http://www.microhouse.com/mtl/vip/hd.htm . EZDrive FAQs and files can be found on FAQ/ALLKEY.htm and FTP/EZ.htm respectively.
• Microsoft
  ftp://ftp.microsoft.com
  http://www.microsoft.com
  General Windows and DOS updates, fixes and Microsoft Knowledge Base articles can be found on the Microsoft FTP site. Unfortunately, the structure of this site can hardly be called intuitive (which, some would argue, is characteristic of Microsoft products in general). The WWW site allows searches in the Knowledge Base, which is much more useful.
• MR BIOS
  http://www.mrbios.com
  mrbios@mrbios.com
  Information on MR BIOS bioses. Contains downloadable shareware BIOS images for some popular boards with Flash ROM as well.
• Novell
  http://www.novell.com
  http://www.netware.com (Netware info)
• OnTrack
  http://www.ontrack.com
  tech@ontrack.com (tech support)
  sales@ontrack.com (sales)
• Phoenix
  http://www.ptltd.com
• SCO
  http://www.sco.com
• Unicore software
  http://www.unicore.com
  Calls itself a BIOS solutions site. Contains, among other things, information about the LBA Pro BIOS add on board.

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