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Maybe I started to use computers too late (my 1st HDD supported UDMA/33 or 66 AFAIR), but I don’t remember any problems with master/slave. Just set jumpers and

Maybe I started to use computers too late (my 1st HDD supported UDMA/33 or 66 AFAIR), but I don’t remember any problems with master/slave. Just set jumpers and it works.

codezero 5y ago
Yeah, I am not doubting the author at all, but I built a lot of computers for myself and others in the 90s, and maybe I just don't remember, or maybe I always had two cables, one for each drive, but I distinctly remember setting jumpers and it just worked. That said, I was using mostly Linux, sometimes Windows, so maybe this was an OS/2 thing? Something I do remember though, was having to get the blocks, cylinders, etc... manually when partitioning/formatting disks. I guess I got lucky with the drives I used, which back then would have mostly been Western Digital with a splash of Seagate, maybe because I didn't typically mix vendors in an initial build I just didn't run into these issues.
EvanAnderson 5y ago
Just a couple years earlier and it was more fraught, for sure. UMDA/33 was probably late '97 or early '98. I got a couple of oddball IDE drives from a friend back in about '94-- a 100MB-ish Xebec and a similarly-sized KALOK drive. I recall having difficult getting them working along side my Western Digital 250MB. I had a SCSI CD-ROM so I didn't have that mess to deal with and ended up running one of the oddball drives at a time on my secondary IDE channel. The fun I don't miss was "disk overlays" and finally adding a Promise-branded ISA card with an option ROM to exceed the >1,024 cylinder (504MiB) "barrier". I still have that card knocking around somewhere, I think. It'd be fun to dump that ROM and see what it looked like.
brudgers 5y ago
The problem I remember was reconfiguring computers. There were the jumpers and changes to BIOS. And drivers in Autoexec.bat and Config.sys for CDROM's. If I wasn't systematic and taking notes, I could spend time thrashing round in circles through reboots and partial hardware disassembly. Oh gosh, once I was upgrading a mid-tower clone with a second drive (170mb). It had a Cyrix 803087 chip that didn't seat tight in the motherboard and it would work fine on its side from gravity so I would button it up and the chip would loosen when the case was standing up and the system didn't boot and my notes didn't help and it was a production machine. Figured it out around two in the morning.

Maybe I started to use computers too late (my 1st HDD supported UDMA/33 or 66 AFAIR), but I don’t remember any problems with master/slave. Just set jumpers and it works.

codezero 5y ago

Yeah, I am not doubting the author at all, but I built a lot of computers for myself and others in the 90s, and maybe I just don't remember, or maybe I always had two cables, one for each drive, but I distinctly remember setting jumpers and it just worked. That said, I was using mostly Linux, sometimes Windows, so maybe this was an OS/2 thing? Something I do remember though, was having to get the blocks, cylinders, etc... manually when partitioning/formatting disks. I guess I got lucky with the drives I used, which back then would have mostly been Western Digital with a splash of Seagate, maybe because I didn't typically mix vendors in an initial build I just didn't run into these issues.

EvanAnderson 5y ago

Just a couple years earlier and it was more fraught, for sure. UMDA/33 was probably late '97 or early '98. I got a couple of oddball IDE drives from a friend back in about '94-- a 100MB-ish Xebec and a similarly-sized KALOK drive. I recall having difficult getting them working along side my Western Digital 250MB. I had a SCSI CD-ROM so I didn't have that mess to deal with and ended up running one of the oddball drives at a time on my secondary IDE channel. The fun I don't miss was "disk overlays" and finally adding a Promise-branded ISA card with an option ROM to exceed the >1,024 cylinder (504MiB) "barrier". I still have that card knocking around somewhere, I think. It'd be fun to dump that ROM and see what it looked like.

brudgers 5y ago

The problem I remember was reconfiguring computers. There were the jumpers and changes to BIOS. And drivers in Autoexec.bat and Config.sys for CDROM's. If I wasn't systematic and taking notes, I could spend time thrashing round in circles through reboots and partial hardware disassembly. Oh gosh, once I was upgrading a mid-tower clone with a second drive (170mb). It had a Cyrix 803087 chip that didn't seat tight in the motherboard and it would work fine on its side from gravity so I would button it up and the chip would loosen when the case was standing up and the system didn't boot and my notes didn't help and it was a production machine. Figured it out around two in the morning.