clear@actrix.co.nz (Charlie Lear) (03/22/90)
In article <25100002@adaptex> neese@adaptex.UUCP writes: >I would not suggest anyone avoids SCSI. I would rather say, that you should >be intelligent about choosing SCSI. SCSI is not for everyone. Selecting >the peripherals can be a chore. I've been waiting for someone from Adaptec to show their head above the trench... 8-) One thing I've never been able to figure out is IDE interface drives. Everyone is able to tell me that the drive controller is built onto the drive and it uses a simple host adaptor. I've been trying to get Miniscribe 8051A's and Quantum Pro-40's running with a Taiwanese 12MHz AT motherboard with AMI BIOS, and have had no end of hassles. The Miniscribes (all four of them that we tried) reported faulty drive, faulty controller, or invalid drive specification, despite the fact that all four worked perfectly in our 8MHz IBM AT testbed. Someone at Melco (our local Miniscribe supplier) said that we might have bought old versions of the drive. One Quantum has worked well in a variety of machines, but when a second drive was daisychained in the approved manner, it reported seek errors galore and the second drive overheated and died within an hour (just long enough for me to transfer all my word processing data subdirectories onto it). There's a growing number of machines and motherboards being supplied with IDE adaptors built in, and since it appears to be an option growing in popularity, I've tried to find out as much as I can about it. Trouble is, I've been able to turn up absolutely nothing on the subject. Is there a reference somewhere that simply describes IDE technology, and how the drives are arranged? For instance, are adaptors interchangable? Can you daisychain different makes of IDE drive? I'd be grateful if you could throw any light on the above, and absolutely grovellingly in your debt forever if you could assist with the 8051A/Quantum probs. (I've gone back to an MFM (ugh!) controller and Miniscribe 3085 drive until I get the IDE thing sorted.) Regards Charlie Lear -- Charlie "The Bear" Lear: Call The Cave BBS, 64(4)643429 157MB Online! Home of the World Famous KiwiBoard BBS Software! Snail: P.O. Box 12-175, Thorndon, Wellington, New Zealand All mail and flames to clear@actrix.co.nz