[comp.sys.ibm.pc] Mixing ST506&SCSI

yeh@cs.purdue.EDU (Wei Jen Yeh) (03/10/90)

  I would like to add a scsi hard drive to my system.  It's a 386 with
4mb, and a WA2 controller supporting a miniscribe 3085 and an st251.  The
drive I have in mind is cdc 94161-182 (155mb).  I have not decided on the
scsi controller yet.  Possible choices are wd fasst and adaptec 1540/1542.

  Can anyone answer these questions for me?  Thanks.

  o Is it possible to have both the WA2 and the scsi controllers in my system?
  o If the answer is no,
      is there any way to use the 3085, like SCSI to ST506/412 converters?
  o Do you have any good/bad experiences on any of the above three controllers?
    How about the hard drive?
  o Is 1540 functionally equivalent to 1542 except the floppy interface?
    Is it possible to disable the floppy interface on 1542?
  o Do I need special software to format the hard drive?
    If yes, which one would you recommend?
  o How about dos support?  any driver required?
  o I seem to recall that scsi hard drives will present themselves as having no
    bad tracks.  Is this true?  How is this accomplished?
    This is a factor since some 386 system v can't handle too many bad tracks.

I appreciate your help.

Wei Jen Yeh

yeh@cs.purdue.edu
Department of Computer Science
Purdue University
West Lafayette, Indiana