How to format non-Apple drives with HD Setup

[Frederick E. Brown]

Ok.  So you've got a non-Apple hard disk and you want to format and partion
it for A/UX but Apple's HD Setup won't reconize your drive.   'Damn!' you say?  
 Well, don't dispair!   A simple patch to HD Setup could be all you need.  
Here's the scoop...  HD Setup has a list of drives that it will reconize as 
being "suitable."   And guess what?   All these drives just happen to be the 
ones that Apple sells.   Who would of figured??   This list of accepted drives 
is kept in CODE resource ID=5 (the %A5Init resource) starting around offset 
0x210 as Pascal strings  (a string preceded by a length byte).   For instance,  
the Quantum Q250 drive mechanism is stored as:
0C 51 55 41 4E 54 55 4D 20 51 32 35 30
 
translated into ASCII as:
12  Q  U  A  N  T  U  M     2  5  0  Q
where 12 is the length.  You can easily see the names by using resedit and 
looking at CODE ID=5 around 0x210.  Apparently HD Setup asks each SCSI drive 
what drive mech it has and compares it against the list.  If your drive doesn't 
work with HD Setup then you just need to change the characters in one of the 
listed names to what your drive mech is.  For instance:  I have a Quantum 170 
meg so HD Setup won't normally work with my drive.  I went in and changed the 
length byte of the first Quantum drive entry to a 0x01.  Now HD Setup just 
compares my drive mech with 'Q' which will always match with any Quantum drive.  
Bingo!  Now I can format and partition my drive.  The same should hold true for 
any Quantum or Seagate drive (but I can't guarantee it).  I've formated and 
partitioned a Quantum 105 and 170 meg drive for A/UX using this patch and I've 
had no difficulties.  It may also work for non-Quantum, non-Seagate drives but I
haven't tried these yet.  Just edit an entry in the CODE segment to what your 
drive mech is (just the first letter is sufficent,  i.e.  0x01  0x51 for Quantum
or 0x01 0x53 for Seagate).  This might save you from having to buy Silver 
Lining.  Once again,  I don't guarantee that this will work (except for Quantum 
105s and 170s) but it should for any Quantum or Seagate and perhaps others as 
well.  Give it a try and let me know.  Good luck!
 
Many thanx go to Steve Green at the University of Maryland for this helpful 
patch.  Nice job Steve!
 
 
rick at ra.src.umd.edu                                  rick at bagend.eng.umd.edu
rick at cscwam.umd.edu