User`s guide

Hard discs from other sources

Hard discs from other sources may or may not be formatted. If yours is not,

double-click with SELECT on !FormatIDE to start the process.

Follow the instructions which appear on your screen. The program recognises

many IDE discs automatically and you should only need to type

and press

RETURN in answer to all the questions.

The formatting process takes only a few seconds. (Discs are in fact formatted by

the makers and are just initialised at this stage).

Unfortunately some discs do not identify themselves correctly to the program.

(

They disguise themselves so that PCs can understand them). All may seem

correct until you start to use the disc, when strange symptoms may appear. If this

happens, read on.

You will need a 'translate table' which should be available from the supplier of the

disc.

When you have this, run !FormatIDE up to the point where you are asked to

confirm that the parameters are correct. Answer

and proceed to enter the

values from your table when asked.

An interleave setting in the range 1 to 4 may be chosen. In most cases a value of 1

will

give the best overall performance. A setting of 3 is recommended for the

PrairieTek PT120.

Do not+add any more defects and do not carry out a low level format. If you run into

difficulties with this procedure, contact our service department for assistance.

The IDE filing system ('IDEFS')

Your computer uses a filing system to read and write discs. There are several

different filing systems and your computer will be 'configured' to use one of them

by 'default'. Most users

will

have 'ADFS' as their default filing system.

You may never have thought about filing systems before, but now you have the

ideA you will

sometimes need to be aware of ADFS and IDEFS.

The first time you try to catalogue your new IDE hard disc (by pointing to the IDE

hard disc icon and clicking SELECT) you may see an error message.

This error will be prevented if you first give the operating system command

*IDEFS

which makes IDEFS the current filing system.

To enter an operating system command from the Desktop press function key F12

to obtain the 'command line', then type the command followed by RETURN. The

can be omitted.