[comp.sys.ibm.pc] Maxtor and Miniscribe drive query

burton@mitisft.Convergent.COM (Philip Burton) (01/04/90)

I would like the net's help to get specs on these drives:

Miniscribe 8438.  Is this an RLL or MFM drive?

Maxtor 2190.  Is this 1024 or 1224 cyliners?

Supposedly, a Maxtor 1140 is just a 2190 that has been tested to "only" 918
cylinders.  Does anyone run an 1140 to 1024 (1224 ???) cylinders?

Comments?

Phil Burton

davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (Wm E. Davidsen Jr) (01/04/90)

In article <1342@mitisft.Convergent.COM> burton@mitisft.Convergent.COM (Philip Burton) writes:

| Supposedly, a Maxtor 1140 is just a 2190 that has been tested to "only" 918
| cylinders.  Does anyone run an 1140 to 1024 (1224 ???) cylinders?

  This has gone around before. The answer is that it is a 2190, but if
there is a defect in the "extra" cylinders they're not under warantee.
-- 
	bill davidsen - sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX
davidsen@sixhub.uucp		...!uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen

"Getting old is bad, but it beats the hell out of the alternative" -anon

davis@clocs.cs.unc.edu (Mark Davis) (01/04/90)

Sorry to post, but mail bounced.

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In article <1342@mitisft.Convergent.COM> Phil Burton writes:
>I would like the net's help to get specs on these drives:
>
>Miniscribe 8438.  Is this an RLL or MFM drive?
RLL, see below
>
>Maxtor 2190.  Is this 1024 or 1224 cyliners?
1224, see below.
>
>Supposedly, a Maxtor 1140 is just a 2190 that has been tested to "only" 918
>cylinders.  Does anyone run an 1140 to 1024 (1224 ???) cylinders?
>
>Comments?
>
>Phil Burton

I have also heard the about Maxtor 1140 -> 2190 possibility.  I have no
first hand knowledge.

The Western Digital Bulletin Board has geometry for many drives in a
file called DRVTALL.TXT.  The number for the BBS is 714-756-8176.  Here
is what it contains for your drives:

-----------------------------------------------------------10/2/89-----------
|       CAP   = CAPACITY IN FORMATTED MEGABYTES
|       CYC   = MAXIMUM NUMBER OF CYLINDER
|       H     = NUMBER OF DATA HEADS
|       RWC   = START REDUCED WRITE CURRENT
|               IF IT'S = CYC + 1 THEN IT IS NOT USED
|       WPC   = START WRITE PRECOMP
|               IF IT'S = CYC + 1 THEN IT IS NOT USED
|       ENC   = ENCODING METHOD R=RLL, M=MFM
|       RATE  = TRANSFER RATE IN MEGABITS/SEC
|       ACCESS= AVERAGE ACCESS TIME
|       SPT   = SECTORS/TRACK X 512 bytes
|       FH    = FULL HIGH FORM FACTOR
|       HH    = HALF HIGH FORM FACTOR
|       R     = RLL (run length limited)
|       N     = NRZ (non return to zero)
|       M     = MFM (modified frequency modulation)
|       SA    = STAND ALONE
|       Z     = ZBR
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MAXTOR         408-432-1700
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MODEL   ST-506  MFM      CAP   CYC  H  RWC  WPC ENC  RATE ACCESS  SPT COMMENTS
XT-1140          5.25 FH  119  918 15  919  919 M    5    27 MS   17
XT-2190          5.25 FH  159 1224 15 1225 1225 M    5    29 MS   17
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MINISCRIBE     303-651-6000
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MODEL   AT               CAP   CYC  H  RWC  WPC ENC  RATE ACCESS  SPT COMMENTS
        ST-506  RLL
8438              3.5"    32   615  4  616  128 R    7.5  68 MS   26
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hope this helps - Mark (davis@cs.unc.edu or uunet!mcnc!davis)

keithe@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Keith Ericson) (01/05/90)

In article <1342@mitisft.Convergent.COM> burton@mitisft.Convergent.COM (Philip Burton) writes:
>I would like the net's help to get specs on these drives:

>Miniscribe 8438.  Is this an RLL or MFM drive?

>Maxtor 2190.  Is this 1024 or 1224 cyliners?

>Supposedly, a Maxtor 1140 is just a 2190 that has been tested to "only" 918
>cylinders.  Does anyone run an 1140 to 1024 (1224 ???) cylinders?


The Miniscribe 8438 is an RLL drive; 615 cyl, 4 head, write comp at cyl
128, 26 sec/tk. And it's slow: 68 ms avg access.

The Maxtor 1140 is indeed a 2190 as you described.  The way I determine
how many cylinders to push it to is to connect up a controller (OMTI,
usually, to get 1:1 interleave) and use a formatting program (WDFMT -
from Western Digital, usually) to format ONE head, and I tell the
program to format 1250 cylinders.  Then I watch as the formatting
program reports progress and observe the cylinder-count number when I
hear the characteristic "BREEeoonnnk" as the heads reset from the
highest numbered cylinder to track 0.

kEITHe

roberta@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Roberta Hodara) (01/05/90)

The miniscribe 8438 is an rll drive.  Miniscribe has a toll free number :
1-800-356-5333 which you can call for more info.z

jupakkanen@cc.helsinki.fi (01/05/90)

> 
> Maxtor 2190.  Is this 1024 or 1224 cyliners?
> 
 
Maxtor XT-2190 is a 1224 cylinder drive.

norm@bartek1.uucp (Norm Bartek) (01/08/90)

In article <1342@mitisft.Convergent.COM> burton@mitisft.Convergent.COM (Philip Burton) writes:
>I would like the net's help to get specs on these drives:
>
>Maxtor 2190.  Is this 1024 or 1224 cyliners?
>
>Supposedly, a Maxtor 1140 is just a 2190 that has been tested to "only" 918
>cylinders.  Does anyone run an 1140 to 1024 (1224 ???) cylinders?
>
>Comments?
>
>Phil Burton

We have been running a MAXTOR 1140 formatted RLL as 1024 cylinders and 26
sectors/track on a Western Digital WD1006V-SR2 and an Adaptec 2372B. The
WD controller seems to provide better performance from what we've seen and
costs less also. From prior postings on the net, this seems to be a common
use of 1140 drives. By the way, this combo provides about 200MB on an 1140
and about 400KB/sec transfer rates according to some of the disk diags.

-- norm --
-- 
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