How to read a 104 MB Conner hard drive from 1990

Question

I am trying to get text files from an old 386SX computer running PCDOS 5.0. I believe the file system is FAT16.

The hard drive specifications are:

Conner Peripherals MODEL (CFS SERIES) CP3104 
100 MB
CYL      776
HDS        8
SECT      33
WPCOMP     0
LZONE    776
Type     IDE

Its formatted capacity 104.9 MB and it works fine in the original machine. See pic below. The floppy drive is broken so I put the hard drive in a USB enclosure.

Windows says the drive is unformatted and wants to format it, so I tried Linux.

lsusb:

Bus 003 Device 007: ID 152d:2338 JMicron Technology Corp. / JMicron USA Technology Corp. JM20337 Hi-Speed USB to SATA & PATA Combo Bridge

usb-devices:

T:  Bus=03 Lev=01 Prnt=01 Port=00 Cnt=01 Dev#=  7 Spd=480 MxCh= 0
D:  Ver= 2.00 Cls=00(>ifc ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS=64 #Cfgs=  1
P:  Vendor=152d ProdID=2338 Rev=01.00
S:  Manufacturer=JMicron
S:  Product=USB to ATA/ATAPI Bridge
S:  SerialNumber=220000000000
C:  #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=c0 MxPwr=2mA
I:  If#=0x0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 2 Cls=08(stor.) Sub=06 Prot=50 Driver=usb-storage

dmesg | grep -i usb:

[  940.875536] usb 3-1: USB disconnect, device number 2
[  973.289744] usb 3-1: new high-speed USB device number 7 using xhci_hcd
[  973.440121] usb 3-1: New USB device found, idVendor=152d, idProduct=2338, bcdDevice= 1.00
[  973.440125] usb 3-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=5
[  973.440127] usb 3-1: Product: USB to ATA/ATAPI Bridge
[  973.440128] usb 3-1: Manufacturer: JMicron
[  973.440130] usb 3-1: SerialNumber: 220000000000
[  973.442645] usb-storage 3-1:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
[  973.443011] scsi host0: usb-storage 3-1:1.0

dmesg | grep -i sd:

[  974.451623] sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0
[  974.452194] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Very big device. Trying to use READ CAPACITY(16).
[  974.452766] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Using 0xffffffff as device size
[  974.452772] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 4294967296 512-byte logical blocks: (2.20 TB/2.00 TiB)
[  974.453266] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
[  974.453269] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 38 00 00
[  974.453823] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Asking for cache data failed
[  974.453829] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
[  974.478116] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Very big device. Trying to use READ CAPACITY(16).
[  974.478601] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Using 0xffffffff as device size
[  974.480070] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE cmd_age=0s
[  974.480073] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] tag#0 Sense Key : Illegal Request [current] 
[  974.480074] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] tag#0 Add. Sense: Invalid command operation code
[  974.480076] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] tag#0 CDB: Read(16) 88 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 00
[  974.480078] blk_update_request: critical target error, dev sda, sector 0 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 0
[  974.480082] Buffer I/O error on dev sda, logical block 0, async page read
[  974.480576] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE cmd_age=0s
[  974.480577] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] tag#0 Sense Key : Illegal Request [current] 
[  974.480578] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] tag#0 Add. Sense: Invalid command operation code
[  974.480579] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] tag#0 CDB: Read(16) 88 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 00
[  974.480580] blk_update_request: critical target error, dev sda, sector 0 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 0
[  974.480582] Buffer I/O error on dev sda, logical block 0, async page read
[  974.481158] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE cmd_age=0s
[  974.481160] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] tag#0 Sense Key : Illegal Request [current] 
[  974.481161] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] tag#0 Add. Sense: Invalid command operation code
[  974.481162] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] tag#0 CDB: Read(16) 88 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 00

It seems the drive is sda but I can't seem to mount it. How can this be done without a recognized partition?

Answer 1

The USB enclosure is intended for much newer drives. It can't understand such an old drive with no logical block addressing (LBA) support.

The drive needs to be connected directly to motherboard IDE or PCI IDE adapter for better compatibility.

You can transfer files with many file transfer programs and cables, or network, and since your floppy drive is broken, there are a few programs that can be uploaded through serial cable between two computers.

Answer 2

I never got the USB connection to work, those who thought it was at fault were correct. I ultimately found an old tower running Windows 10 that had an unused EIDE connection, plugged the 40 wire IDE cable in and it was recognized. Robocopy and Copy would only copy the smaller files and that took hours. With Gparted the whole drive was copied in 4 minutes. It then turned out that in the 90's Conner drives were small and expensive and slow relative to the CPU so data was compressed on the fly as it was stored. The stuff of interest is on a 100mb file STACKVOL.DSK and current efforts are centered on trying to unstack it.

Answer 3

In practice: If you are an enthusiast that tends to end up in that situation frequently, building a dedicated "disk handling" machine can be a wise thing to do. Find the most compact and modern board (usually, that will mean a P3 or P4 era board) that still has a true (two channels supported!) floppy controller and a real IDE controller and put it in a case where the side panels are easy to take off. Boards that have real IDE, and also SATA, are optimal - you can put your OS disk on the SATA controller and have less chance of a bad IDE device hanging up the whole machine.

Set up with 32-bit Debian Linux, optionally also an actual DOS or old Windows system. Optimally, ALSO with a CD drive - some very early IDE drives that use automatic geometry translation tricks can be REALLY recalcitrant and might need trying several live CDs with older kernels....