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

From: Lance Costanzo <lance_at_costanzo.net>
Date: Fri Jul 27 08:05:17 2001

A parallel port ZIP drive is very handy for this sort of thing.
Easy to setup; in your case I'd format a disk in the old PC (360K),
take it to a newer PC, SYS it with 6.22, put the files on it
for the ZIP drive, and boot it on the old PC. The parallel ZIP
only needs a 1/2 dozen or so control files to work.
a:guest (assigns ZIP to drive D)
xcopy c:*.* d: /s /e (put it on the floppy when you sys it)
It make take awhile. Go have lunch.
Lance.

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?
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 Fri Jul 27 2001 - 08:05:17 BST