Large geometry MFM drive testing

[Steven Hirsch]

On Sun, 31 Oct 2010, Chuck Guzis wrote:

> On 30 Oct 2010 at 15:06, Steven Hirsch wrote:
>
>> All,
>>
>> I'm trying to evaluate a pile of large MFM hard drives for
>> functionality. I'm attaching them to a WD-1006V-MM2 controller and
>> running Sprinrite 4 under DOS 6.0 (using a 486 EISA motherboard).
>>
>> This works fine for drives with < 1024 cylinders, but I cannot seem to
>> remember (or figure out) how to surface-test drives with more
>> cylinders (e.g. Priam V185 with 1166).
>
> The convention when the cylinder field overflows 10 bits is to use
> the two high-order bits of the head field (that's why MFM, and for
> that matter, IDE drives max out at 64 heads when non-LBA geometry is
> used.).

Ok, but I still need to know the procedure and appropriate utility to 
surface-test the drives.  The mapping you describe appears to be a 
low-level notion that is not mapped to anything in DOS fdisk and/or 
Spinrite.

Steve


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