rasmus@contact.uucp (Rasmus Lerdorf) (11/22/89)
I have the following equipment:
1 generic XT clone with a NEC V20 chip
1 ST238 drive
1 WD1002A-27X controller card
1 Plenty Perl card.
1 360K 5.25 floppy drive
First, does anyone know of this Plenty Perl card? It has a game port, a
printer port and it looks like there are 2 serial ports on it as well,
although only one is installed. I also have a 360K 5.25 floppy attached to
the Plenty Perl card. I know I can hook a second 360K floppy drive to this
card because the cables are all in place for this. Does anyone know if I can
put a 1.2 Meg 5.25 or even a 3.5 1.44 Meg drive on the card as my drive B?
And who the heck makes this card? The only thing that seems to distinguish it
is a little "Plenty Perl" label written on the board itself. Also, on the
same board there is a large 40 pin empty socket labeled U10 8250. If I were
to stick an 8250 in that socket, what would happen?
Part 2. I know the WD1002A-27X controller will support a second hard drive.
Will I have any problems hooking up an old ST412 to the controller in addition
to the ST238 that I already have on it? It is just a question of getting a
ribbon cable that jumps from the ST238 to the ST412 and then hooking up that
smaller cable to the card? (Yeah, I am getting really technical with my terms
here.. ;) Need I worry about my 180W power supply driving these additional
drives?
--
Rasmus Lerdorf {lsuc,utzoo,mnetor}!dciem!nttor!rasmus | I'd rather be in Denmark
Northern Telecom, Toronto, Canada. (416)597-2090x2505 | SD Eng Waterloo '93ngeow@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Yee Ngeow) (11/27/89)
In article <1989Nov21.230217.4669@contact.uucp> rasmus@contact.UUCP (Rasmus Lerdorf) writes: >I have the following equipment: >1 generic XT clone with a NEC V20 chip >1 ST238 drive >1 WD1002A-27X controller card >1 Plenty Perl card. >1 360K 5.25 floppy drive > [STUFF DELETED] > >Part 2. I know the WD1002A-27X controller will support a second hard drive. >Will I have any problems hooking up an old ST412 to the controller in addition >to the ST238 that I already have on it? It is just a question of getting a >ribbon cable that jumps from the ST238 to the ST412 and then hooking up that >smaller cable to the card? (Yeah, I am getting really technical with my terms >here.. ;) Need I worry about my 180W power supply driving these additional >drives? ******WARNING******* DO NOT HOOK UP A ST412 TO A RLL CONTROLLER. Period. I used to :-( have a ST412 drive hanging around, and just for the hack of it, I hooked it up to a WD1002-27X (almost like the one you have) and it happily formatted to 15+ MBytes. Gee, I say to myself, it worked! So I copied some software onto it, and ran bunch of benchmarks. Looks pretty good to me...until suddently it started making REAL LOUD NOISE and SMELL OF BURNED PLASTIC hit my nose. I quickly shut it down, and take it out of the machine. The logic board is totally fried. Apparently the ST412 drive I have does not like the 50% higher clock rate of an RLL drive and overheated. Luckly it did not explode and cause fire :-) There *may* be some ST412s out there running RLL controllers happily. But I will NEVER put one of thoese on RLL again. For that matter, I will not put any MFM hard disk pre-1985 era onto a RLL controller. It is just too risky. >-- >Rasmus Lerdorf {lsuc,utzoo,mnetor}!dciem!nttor!rasmus | I'd rather be in Denmark >Northern Telecom, Toronto, Canada. (416)597-2090x2505 | SD Eng Waterloo '93