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
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
Note that the version numbers may have changed; also, you should preferably use
a mirror close to you instead of the oakland site.
A more manageable selection of useful utilities, drivers and information (this
FAQ :-) can be found on
One of the most thorough low level harddisk benchmarks on Earth,
Marnix Timmermans' Check Harddisk, is in beta. Check it out at
