Caleb UHD144 drive under Win98 and DOS

[Multibooter]

The Caleb UHD144i is a lesser known counterpart of the LS-120 drive. By comparing the Caleb and the LS-120/240 drives, maybe some unique capabilities can be discovered. Software for SuperFloppy drives in general could be tested with the Caleb drive.

The Caleb UHD144 as an external parallel drive

The Caleb drive is an ATAPI/IDE device, intended for desktop computers. I have currently a Caleb drive connected to the parallel port of my 11-year-old Inspiron 7500 laptop, in a somewhat unusual way: (see attached picture)

- I have taken the IDE/ATAPI to parallel bridge EPATP-LS120 by Shuttle Technology, from an Imation LS-120 Parallel Drive model no.11795 (actually is was the bridge inside of a bad/non-working parallel LS-120 drive) and connected it to the Caleb drive

- I used the Imation LS-120 parallel driver v1.43. The driver was actually prepared by Shuttle Technology and only slightly modified by Imation. It seems to work fine, except that the Caleb drive in My Computer has the name "SuperDisk".

Since Imation has drivers for parallel LS-120 drives for DOS, Win3x, Win9x and WinXP, this little construct should work also under these operating systems.

Edited August 10, 2011 by Multibooter

[Multibooter]

Technical details about the Caleb drive

Technical details can be found at http://web.archive.org/web/20000511030236/http://www.caleb-bldr.com/specs.html

I have attached a screen shot of the boot sector of a virgin Caleb 144MB diskette. At the left of the screen are also technical details as seen by WinHex

[Multibooter]

I have attached a screen shot of Properties in Win98SE Device Manager of a Caleb drive. The people at Caleb even had the gall to call their drive "Caleb LS-120". No Firmware revision is indicated.

Win98 Device Manager has actually 2 entries for this parallel Caleb drive:

- in class Disk drives: "Caleb LS-120"

- in class SCSI controllers: "Imation SuperDisk Drive - Parallel Port"

WinXP Device Manager has the following 2 entries for this parallel Caleb drive:

- in class Floppy disk drives: "Caleb LS-120"

- in class System Devices: "SCM PPort LS-120 Adapter"

I had the Imation LS-120 parallel driver for WinXP v1.01 already installed, and the Caleb drive was detected/installed without having to enter anything.

Under Win98 My Computer displayed the drive letter K: for the Caleb drive, under WinXP the drive letter B:

The Wikipedia has an image of the Caleb drive at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Caleb-uhd144.jpg , with the comment "This is a rare image of a rare product. Not many of these were sold, and images of it are rare."

Let's see whether this rare drive is actually useful, or whether it is just obsolete stuff for the museum.

Edited August 10, 2011 by Multibooter

[Multibooter]

Information needed for the caleb format

I am currently fiddling around with the Matsus***a SuperDisk Format Utility on an LS-120 drive. I wanted to see whether I can convert a 120MB LS-120 diskette into a 144MB Caleb diskette. The SuperDisk Format Utility, when NoCheck is set to 01 in the registry, automatically adds another format selection to the Capacity drop-down box after having added another definition to FMTDATA.INI and another 512-byte .bin file with the boot sector to the install-to directory.

In other words: maybe the SuperDisk Format Utility can re-initialize, on an LS-120 drive, a bulk-erased LS-120 diskette as a 144MB caleb diskette.

For that, I need the following values for the Caleb diskette. I have indicated the values used by the SuperDisk Format Utility for LS-120 diskettes:

Media Type [LS-120: 0x31]

Cylinders [LS-120: 963]

Heads [LS-120: 8]

ByteSector [LS-120: 512]

SectorTrack [LS-120: 32]

BootSector [LS-120: 1]

Fat [LS-120: 2]

SectorFat [LS-120: 241]

Entry [LS-120: 512]

ByteEntry [LS-120: 32]

I have no idea what the values should be for the caleb diskette.

GRDuw, for example, seems to give strange/incorrect info when checking a caleb diskette in the caleb drive. Norton Disk Doctor destroyed a caleb diskette, which I was able to repair after a lot of fiddling.

A screenshot of WinHex, displaying the boot sector of a virgin caleb diskette, is attached to posting #2 above. What WinHex indicates may be a good starting point for getting the right values.

Edited August 23, 2011 by Multibooter

[dencorso]

Try using the FAT 16 Boot Sector and the MBR templates offered by WinHex on the CALEB floppy. If you don't have them, you may download them from WinHex site.

However, they now use the extension .tpl, while the last version that works for 98SE wants them to have a .txt extension, so you'll have to change the extension, before dropping them into the WinHex folder.

To use them just go to the View menu and select "Template Manager", then the template and click on "apply".

Bear in mind the cursor must be on the 1st byte of the page, though, for those templates to work correctly.

[Multibooter]

Try using the FAT 16 Boot Sector and the MBR templates offered by WinHex on the CALEB floppy. If you don't have them, you may download them from WinHex site.

However, they now use the extension .tpl, while the last version that works for 98SE wants them to have a .txt extension, so you'll have to change the extension, before dropping them into the WinHex folder.

To use them just go to the View menu and select "Template Manager", then the template and click on "apply".

Bear in mind the cursor must be on the 1st byte of the page, though, for those templates to work correctly.

Thanks, dencorso. The template "Boot Sector FAT" is apparently already included with WinHex v12.8-SR 10. I just had to do the following with WinHex under Win98SE:

How to display the information contained in the boot sector of a WinHex .001 image file:

-> WinHex -> File -> Open

in window Open files: -> select .001 file

-> View -> Template Manager

in window Template Manager: -> select "Boot sector FAT" -> Apply

in msg window WinHex: "The data at offset 0 does not meet the template's requirements. Continue anyway?" -> Yes

window "Boot Sector FAT, Base Offset 0" now displays the information contained in the boot sector of a virgin caleb diskette (see attached screenshot)

BTW, GRDuw displays very similar information with its "Information" button.

What confused me, with both the WinHex and the GRDuw information, is the following:

281856 sectors / 64 heads / 32 sectors per track = 137.625 tracks. I have no idea how the fraction of a track works.

I have tried to re-initialize and to re-format a demagnetized 120MB LS-120 diskette into a 144MB caleb diskette, using SuperDisk Format Utility and the value of cylinders set to 137, based on the above calculation.

Unfortunately the resulting diskette was not seen by the caleb drive as a 144MB caleb diskette. I will give details on this experiment in a subsequent posting. For the conversion experiment I had added the following section to Fmtdata.ini in the install-to of SuperDisk Format Utility:

[Formatcaleb]

Default = 1

MediaType = 0x31

Display = caleb 144MB

DataFile = caleb.bin

Cylinders = 137

Heads = 64

ByteSector = 512

SectorTrack = 32

BootSector = 1

Fat = 2

SectorFat = 138

Entry = 512

ByteEntry = 32

caleb.bin is a 512-byte file with the boot sector of a virgin caleb diskette. I had also tried with Cylinders set to 138, but the caleb drive didn't accept the diskette either.

Edited August 29, 2011 by Multibooter

[dencorso]

Try 138 cylinders. I've learned th hard way always to round up (not down) fractional numbers, when dealing with disk structures.

[Multibooter]

Caleb UHD144 drive under Ubuntu

I have given my caleb drive now a permanent home in an ME-720 USB 2.0 enclosure (ALi chip). When I connected the caleb USB drive to a laptop running Ubuntu 11.04, it was detected Ok, no problem reading from a 144MB caleb diskette or writing to it under Ubuntu.

fdisk =lu in Ubuntu Terminal displays strange things however:

"Disk /dev/sdb: 144 MB, 144310272 bytes

5 heads, 56 sectors/track, 1006 cylinders, total 281856 sectors

Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

Disk identifier: 0x73696420

This doesn't look like a partition table

Probably you selected the wrong device.

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/sdb1 ? 1919950958 2464388050 272218546+ 20 Unknown

Partition 1 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):

phys=(356, 97, 46) logical=(6856967, 3, 31)

Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:

phys=(357, 116, 40) logical=(8801385, 4, 27)

Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.

/dev/sdb2 ? 1330184202 1869160489 269488144 6b Unknown

Partition 2 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):

phys=(288, 110, 57) logical=(4750657, 4, 19)

Partition 2 has different physical/logical endings:

phys=(269, 101, 57) logical=(6675573, 0, 50)

Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.

/dev/sdb3 ? 538989391 1937352302 699181456 53 OnTrack DM6 Aux3

Partition 3 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):

phys=(345, 32, 19) logical=(1924962, 0, 32)

Partition 3 has different physical/logical endings:

phys=(324, 77, 19) logical=(6919115, 1, 47)

Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.

/dev/sdb4 * 1394627663 1394648999 10668+ 49 Unknown

Partition 4 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):

phys=(87, 1, 0) logical=(4980813, 0, 24)

Partition 4 has different physical/logical endings:

phys=(335, 78, 2) logical=(4980889, 1, 24)

Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary.

Partition table entries are not in disk order"

No idea why Terminal displayed this info.

MBRWizard 4.0 under WinXP displays the following information:

MBRWizard Suite, v. 4.0.0.135

Details for Disk 1: Caleb LS-120

Date Saved: 7/28/2012

Disk Information

--------------------------------------------------------

Model Caleb LS-120

MBR/GPT: MBR

Physical Size: 144,310,272

Formatted size: 137.63MiB

Sector Count: 281,856

Signature: 73696420

Interface: USB

Connection: Removable

Total Partitions: 4

Primary Partitions: 4

Logical Partitions: 0

Primary Partition #1

--------------------------------------------------------

Type: 53 (DSKMGR)

Active (boot): No (20)

Start Sector (LBA): 538989391

Total Sectors (LBA): 1398362912

Starting CHS: 345 32 19

Ending CHS: 324 77 19

Size (in bytes): 715961810944

Volume Label:

Primary Partition #2

--------------------------------------------------------

Type: 6B (UNKNWN)

Active (boot): No (61)

Start Sector (LBA): 1330184202

Total Sectors (LBA): 538976288

Starting CHS: 288 110 57

Ending CHS: 269 101 57

Size (in bytes): 275955859456

Volume Label:

Primary Partition #3

--------------------------------------------------------

Type: 49 (UNKNWN)

Active (boot): Yes (80)

Start Sector (LBA): 1394627663

Total Sectors (LBA): 21337

Starting CHS: 87 1 0

Ending CHS: 335 78 2

Size (in bytes): 10924544

Volume Label:

Primary Partition #4

--------------------------------------------------------

Type: 20 (UNKNWN)

Active (boot): No (20)

Start Sector (LBA): 1919950958

Total Sectors (LBA): 544437093

Starting CHS: 356 97 46

Ending CHS: 357 116 40

Size (in bytes): 278751791616

Volume Label:

There are conflicting specifications of the Caleb UHD144 drive:

1) 11-May-2000: http://web.archive.org/web/20000511030236/http://www.caleb-bldr.com/specs.html 2011 tpi, 281,504 sectors

2) 5-May-2003: http://web.archive.org/web/20030505204307/http://www.calebdrive.com/manual3.html 1960 tpi 281,376 sectors

and: "UHD Sectors per Track varies according to zone"

Both Ubuntu Terminal and MBRWizard display 281.856 sectors on real media. No idea whether the specifications published by the makers/marketers of the Caleb drive were correct , or apply to the working specimen I own, or to beta units.

I also own 2 non-functioning/broken caleb drives, one has a sticker on it, with text hand-written with blue ball-point pen "BETA 2". I have no idea how many caleb drives were produced (only in the period Nov-Dec 1999??), I would speculate around 500 units, based on the numbers handwritten on the Caleb drives and printed on the bar code stickers on them.

Edited July 28, 2012 by Multibooter

[Mijzelf]

The device just doesn't have a partition table.

[jds]

Norton Disk Doctor destroyed a caleb diskette, which I was able to repair after a lot of fiddling.

Err ... shouldn't you have used Norton Disk Editor instead? I think there's a version of this within the Norton Emergency Disk ("ned_2001.exe", available from Symantec's FTP server).

"UHD Sectors per Track varies according to zone"

Does that mean more sectors in the outer cylinders & less in the inner cylinders?

Joe.

Edited July 28, 2012 by jds

[Multibooter]

"UHD Sectors per Track varies according to zone"

Does that mean more sectors in the outer cylinders & less in the inner cylinders?

I have no idea, maybe my experiment in posting #6 helps to clear up the question:

What confused me, with both the WinHex and the GRDuw information, is the following:

281856 sectors / 64 heads / 32 sectors per track = 137.625 tracks. I have no idea how the fraction of a track works.

I have tried to re-initialize and to re-format a demagnetized 120MB LS-120 diskette into a 144MB caleb diskette, using SuperDisk Format Utility and the value of cylinders set to 137, based on the above calculation.

Unfortunately the resulting diskette was not seen by the caleb drive as a 144MB caleb diskette. ... I had also tried with Cylinders set to 138, but the caleb drive didn't accept the diskette either.

Could it be that the caleb diskette is formatted into 4 partitions, with each partition ("zone"???) having a different number of sectors per track, so that the average sectors per track for the whole diskette became a fraction? Could the caleb people with such a trick maybe increase the capacity of the diskette to 144MB, higher than the 120MB of the competing LS-120 drive?

In any case it is very interesting that "fdisk -lu" under Ubuntu and MBRWizard 4.0 under WinXP can display possible partition information on removable media

The device just doesn't have a partition table.

I disagree. I have inserted under WinXP into an SDHC card reader a 1GB SD card with 2 partitions, which I had left over from my experiments with SDHC cards , and MBRWizard displayed correctly the partition info of the SDHC card:

MBRWizard Suite, v. 4.0.0.135

Details for Disk 1: Generic STORAGE DEVICE

Date Saved: 7/28/2012

Disk Information

--------------------------------------------------------

Model Generic STORAGE DEVICE

MBR/GPT: MBR

Physical Size: 1,019,215,872

Formatted size: 972.00MiB

Sector Count: 1,990,656

Signature: A1CFA1EC

Interface: USB

Connection: Removable

Total Partitions: 3

Primary Partitions: 2

Logical Partitions: 1

Primary Partition #1

--------------------------------------------------------

Type: 0B (FAT32)

Active (boot): Yes (80)

Start Sector (LBA): 32

Total Sectors (LBA): 1146848

Starting CHS: 0 0 33

Ending CHS: 71 99 28

Size (in bytes): 587186176

Volume Label: SCSI0_VOL1

Primary Partition #2

--------------------------------------------------------

Type: 05 (EXTEND)

Active (boot): No (0)

Start Sector (LBA): 1146880

Total Sectors (LBA): 839680

Starting CHS: 71 99 29

Ending CHS: 122 167 44

Size (in bytes): 429916160

Volume Label:

Logical Partition #1

Type: 05 (EXTEND)

Active (boot): No (0)

Start Sector (LBA): 1156680

Total Sectors (LBA): 465885

Starting CHS: 72 0 1

Ending CHS: 100 254 63

Size (in bytes): 238533120

Volume Label:

MBRWizard 4.0 appears to display correctly the partition info of a partitioned SD card, so the partition info by MBRWizard about the caleb diskette (also removable/ejectable media in a USB device) may be correct.

Edited July 28, 2012 by Multibooter

[Mijzelf]

The device just doesn't have a partition table.

I disagree. I have inserted under WinXP into an SDHC card reader a 1GB SD card with 2 partitions, which I had left over from my experiments with SDHC cards <snip> MBRWizard 4.0 appears to display correctly the partition info of a partitioned SD card, so the partition info by MBRWizard about the caleb diskette (also removable/ejectable media in a USB device) may be correct.

I agree that MBRWizard might be capable to correctly show the partition table of a caleb diskette, but the output of both fdisk and MBRWizard in this case is plain bogus. The partitions overlap, and are bigger than the disk itself. So the MBR doesn't contain a valid partition table.

[jaclaz]

Maybe (and modestly) if you open the first sector of the \\PhysicalDriven with Tiny Hexer and apply to it my viewers, it might be easier to understand the contents.

OR get HdHacker, save a copy of first sector of \\PhysicalDriven, compress it to a .zip and attach it and I'll have a look at it.

jaclaz

[Multibooter]

Hi jaclaz,

Great to have you on board. I have attached the MBR saved by HDHacker v1.4, of a (most likely) virgin, never used caleb diskette. Again, one of my objectives is to convert an Imation LS-120 120MB diskette into a caleb 144MB diskette. caleb diskettes are very hard to find nowadays.

MBR_HardDisk1_caleb_diskette_nr_4.rar

[jaclaz]

Hi jaclaz,

Great to have you on board. I have attached the MBR saved by HDHacker v1.4, of a (most likely) virgin, never used caleb diskette. Again, one of my objectives is to convert an Imation LS-120 120MB diskette into a caleb 144MB diskette. caleb diskettes are very hard to find nowadays.

As expected, it is a "normal" MS-DOS FAT16 bootsector or PBR.

Bootsector or PBR structure:Start position: 0x00000000        
Position 0 of open file: 0x00000000
GENERAL DATA: Offset   Description   Value Notes Dec Hex Hex Dec 
0      0000    JMP instruction:    EB3E90              
54     0036    Filesytem:                              FAT16           
510    01FE    Magic Bytes:                            0xAA55

3      0003    OEM String:                             MSWIN4.0      
11     000B    Bytes per sector:     0200   512
13     000D    Sectors per cluster:    08   8
14     000E    Reserved sectors:     0001   1
16     0010    Number of FAT(s):       02   2
17     0011    Max ROOT entries:     0200   512
19     0013    Small type sectors:   0000   0
21     0015    Media type:             F8   248
22     0016    Sectors per FAT:      008A   138
24     0018    Sectors per Head:     0020   32
26     001A    Number of Heads:      0040   64
28     001C    Sectors Before:   00000000   0
32     0020    Large Sectors:    00044D00   281856
36     0024    Disk number:            00   0
37     0025    Current Head:           00   0
38     0026    NT signature:           29   41
77     004D    Volume Serial:    1E0076C5   503346885
43     002B    Volume label:                           NO NAME                 
54     0036    System ID:                              FAT16                   
472    01D8    System File 1:                          IO      SYS             
483    01E3    System File 2:                          MSDOS   SYS 

jaclaz