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 ( landis@sugs.tware.com ). 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).
roakland
site.
A more manageable selection of useful utilities, drivers and information (this FAQ :-) can be found on
SimTel has a copy of TheRef[TM] by F. Robert Falbo, a giant hardware reference; it is rather outdated, but fortunately you can access a more up to date copy on the web at http://theref.c3d.rl.af.mil .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 .
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.
A number of disk and controller manufacturers now have FTP and web sites; these are
sgatfmt4
, is also
available.
/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
.
/DNLOAD/
directory.
/pub/valuepnt/
.
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