no rom basic

From: Richard Erlacher <edick_at_idcomm.com>
Date: Tue Feb 9 08:59:06 1999

An important thing to keep in mind, however, is that not all drives adhere
to the latest, or even the more recent standard. Since this discussions
centers around old hardware, I'd be REALLY careful with ide interfaced
devices.

Case in point:

I once used a number of MAXTOR MXT540A drives, which were WONDERFUL . . .
they were fast, (6300 rpm at a time when most were 3600 rpm) beyond belief
at the time and very reliable. After a couple of years, Hitachi came out
with a nice CDROM drive, the 7730 (?) of which I bought a number.
Unfortunately, when I placed the HITACHI CDROM as a slave on the same cable
with the MAXTOR HDD as master, the servo on the HDD was overwritten, which
I only was able to verify after destroying (irreparably, because the
hardware with which to rewrite the servo didn't exist at MAXTOR any more
even though the drives were still within their two-year warranty) half a
dozen such hard disks. The CDROM certainly claimed to adhere to existing
convention, as did the HDD. MAXTOR was not able to explain the
malfunction, nor were they able to replace the drives with anything
comparable. --pity--

Dick

----------
> From: Eric Smith <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
> To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp_at_u.washington.edu>
> Subject: Re: no rom basic
> Date: Monday, February 08, 1999 10:58 PM
>
> jpero_at_cgocable.net wrote:
> > You done exactly right on everything except LLF which is big NO
> > No on modern drives, potientially losing it!
>
> I wish just for once that someone would actually cite a specific drive
> model for which this is true. I've LLF'd many of them with no ill
> effects.
>
> The ANSI X3.298-1997 standard, "Information Technology - AT Attachment-3
> Interface (ATA-3)" says that the FORMAT TRACK command is vendor-specific
> and recommends against systems using it, but nowhere does it suggest
> that an acceptable implementation would be to trash a drive.
>
> I have seen some drives that treat the command as a NOOP, simply
> returning success impediately without actually doing anything, but I've
> yet to see one which actually causes any harm to the drive.
>
> If anyone cares to present contrary evidence, please cite specifics.
> I'm not interested in FOAF anecdotes.
Received on Tue Feb 09 1999 - 08:59:06 GMT