I had a miniscribe 6085 in my 286 in the late 80's. It is an MFM (ST506
interface) drive with the same parameters as the Seagate ST4096. I think
cylinders are 1024, heads at 9, and sectors per track at 17. The RLL
model would have an 'R' appended to the model number and would have 26
sectors per track.
You might be able to run the RLL model on an MFM controller as the
difference between the two variations is mainly the platters. Rarely are
the drives much different. I ran a 3650 for a couple of years on an
Adaptec ACB4070 bridge controller and believe it or not they worked
perfectly though they weren't rated for RLL linear density.
Despite thier poor reliability record, I still like Miniscribe drives.
They sound neat. "Peeep wobble wobble Peep". Western Digital bought what
was left of Miniscribe and produced some really aweful drives when IDE was
beginning to really catch on. I remember stacks of dead WD 40mb 3.5"
drives at a company I worked for in 92/93. We called our 'boneyard' "The
Closet of Shame". The drives were an MFM mech with an IDE board attached.
They used stepper actuators and sucked eggs for reliability. They did
sound neat though.....
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Received on Sat Jun 17 2000 - 01:35:19 BST