need help with an old ST-251 MFM drive...

From: joe <rigdonj_at_intellistar.net>
Date: Wed Jul 25 15:01:57 2001

At 12:37 PM 7/25/01 -0700, you wrote:
>Here's the deal:
>
>I have a circa 1982 IBM PC that has a Seagate ST-251 in it attached to a
>Data Technology Corp. DTC-5150CI controller with a BIOS on it. Everything
>works fine and the PC will boot up (it's running PC-DOS 3.3) and I can
>navigate around and look at all the files, etc.
>
>The problem is that I want to pull the files off of this drive, and the
>360K floppy doesn't appeal to me a method of transfer (the hard drive is
>almost full.)
>
>There are three ways I can imagine doing this:
>
>1. Get an 8-bit ethernet card working under DOS 3.3 and somehow connect it
>to my home network,
>2. Install a second HD in the PC that's running off a more modern
>controller (IDE?),
>3. Install the ST-251 into a more modern PC.
>
>I've been trying to get option 3 to work for a week now, but I'm not
>having any luck. Any tips? I'm currently trying to get the DTC controller
>to work in an old EISA 486 with a 1992 AMI BIOS, but I keep getting a "HDD
>Controller failure" message. I've tried it both with the controllers BIOS
>enabled and disabled. If the BIOS is enabled, it puts up a message saying
>"1 hard disk" right before the other error - this is the same message I
>see on the PC right before it starts booting.
>
>So I know the controller itself is "working", but it's not being
>recognized by the BIOS. I'm not sure what's going on.
>
>Any tips? Any other ideas about how to get the data off of this drive?

     How about LapLink or FastLynx? I've used both of them A LOT and they
work great for situations like this.

     Joe


> Should I try another MFM controller?
>
>Daniel
>--
>Daniel A. Segel
>WorldCom
>Employee Systems User Support
>Phone: 916-373-4810; Vnet: 653-4810; Pager: 888-783-5951; AIM: DanSegel
Received on Wed Jul 25 2001 - 15:01:57 BST