3.5" MFM hard disk

From: Don Maslin <donm_at_cts.com>
Date: Mon Jun 4 14:05:15 2001

On Sat, 2 Jun 2001, Jeff Hellige wrote:

> >Likely, but you must be sure that it has at least 4 heads and 153
> >cylinders. The cylinder part is no problem - probably nothing available
> >today would have less :) Another factor to consider is that the ST-506
> >did not have buffered seek IIRC. That is not likely to be a concern
> >either, but if you were going from a modern controller to the 506 it
> >might be a problem.
>
> What I was thinking was that I'd substitute a more readily
> handy drive, such as a 225, knowing that it was larger and that most
> of it's space would be wasted due to the differences in parameters,
> but that there would surely be enough headroom there in the heads and
> cylinders that it would hopefully work ok. I remember there being
> some tolerance for running MFM drives at settings that didn't match
> thier physical layout, as we had to do it on occasion when we had a
> drive which didn't fit any of the 'normal' drive types in the
> AMI/Phoenix/Award BIOS tables and it was before user-derfinable drive
> types. Since the 506 is a full height, this might be a good
> candidate to try and use my Tandon TM502 with. I also have a ST225,
> which I like more than the Tandon, but I'll likely use it to replace
> a faulty drive in a Z-100.
>
> Jeff

Sounds reasonable, Jeff. That way you only 'discard' 5mb instead of 15,
and apply the ST-225 to a machine that is more likely to let you use all
of it.
                                                 - don

> --
> Collector of Classic Microcomputers and Video Game Systems:
> Home of the TRS-80 Model 2000 FAQ File
> http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lakes/6757
>
>
Received on Mon Jun 04 2001 - 14:05:15 BST

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Oct 10 2014 - 23:33:56 BST