Configuring your computer

Marathon 420sl Installation Guide, August 1995	5

application, you must use MCC-compatible connectors and mounting hardware. If the mounting holes in your computer do not line up with the mounting holes on the drive, your computer may not be MCC-compatible.

Before your computer can recognize a new drive, you must enter basic information about the drive into the computer’s long-term memory (usually a battery-powered CMOS chip). The com- puter’s basic input/output system (BIOS) uses this information to control the flow of data to and from the drive.

Note. Some newer computers can automatically determine your drive type and configure themselves appropriately at startup. Read your system manual to determine whether this applies to your computer. If so, then skip ahead to “Formatting and partitioning the drive,” on page 8.

If your computer cannot automatically determine your drive type, you must run a system setup program to specify the number of cylinders, heads and sectors for each drive in your system. This procedure is described on the following page. The table below lists cylinder, head and sector information for the Marathon 420sl.

No. cylinders	988
No. read/write heads	16
No. sectors per track	52
Total no. sectors	822,016
Bytes per sector	512
Capacity (Mbytes):
BIOS calculated	400
Usable	420