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Decathlon 850 ATA Product Manual, July 1995
1.0 Specifications
The Seagate ST5850A comes with either of two printed circuit boards.
The drives are referred to as Type A and Type B throughout this manual.
This specification applies to both drives unless otherwise noted.
1.1 Formatted capacity
Decathlon drives are low-level formatted at the factory. You do not need
to low-level format them.
You can operate the drive using many different address configurations,
provided the number of sectors per track does not exceed 63. The
following tables show CHS and LBA translation geometries for standard
and dual-drive emulation configurations. You can verify the parameters
using the Identify Drive (EC
1.1.1 Standard configuration
ST5850A
Cylinders
Heads
Sectors
Total sectors
Formatted capacity (Mbytes
1.2 528-Mbyte capacity barrier
Computers using some BIOSs impose a 528-Mbyte barrier on the hard
disc drive. The BIOS in these systems use a CHS addressing scheme
that does not acknowledge more than 1,024 cylinders in the translation
geometry. To access the ST5850A's entire capacity, you must:
• Use a BIOS that acknowledges more than 1,024 cylinders or uses
LBA addressing
• Use a host adapter that accepts more than 528 Mbytes
• Use dual-drive emulation
• Use a software driver that surpasses the 528-Mbyte barrier to install
the drive
1. One Mbyte equals one million bytes.
) command.
H
CHS
1,656
16
63
1,669,248
1
)
854.7
3
LBA
N/A
N/A
N/A
1,669,260
854.7
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