On Wed, 17 Oct 2001, A.P. Etc wrote:
> The laptop asks for Cylinders, Heads, Sectors/Track, Writing Precomp
> and Landing Zone. IBM's web site only gives the first three.

Write Precompensation was only used by ancient MFM ST-506 drives which
reduced the write current beyond a certain cylinder.  That value is
irrelevant for any drive produced after about 1988.

Landing Zone was only used by ancient drives which did not automatically
"Park" their heads upon power-down.  Again, irrelevant for any modern
drive.

You can safely put the highest cylinder number for each of these values,
but I suspect they are not the culprits.