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

From: CELang <CELang_at_worldnet.att.net>
Date: Wed Jul 25 21:07:09 2001

Well... If it were me, I'd just hook the things together modem to modem (or
serial port to serial port as the case may be) and send everything over
using terminal software. Procomm was what I used on my olde '286 and XT;
Hyperterminal for my Pentium machine.

Craig

-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel A. Segel <Daniel.Segel_at_wcom.com>
To: classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Date: Wednesday, July 25, 2001 3:13 PM
Subject: need help with an old ST-251 MFM drive...


>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?
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 - 21:07:09 BST