wales@valeria.cs.ucla.edu (01/02/89)
I have a 2-year-old Taiwanese turbo (4.77/8.0 MHz) XT clone with a 30Mb hard disk and two 360Kb, 5.25" floppy drives. I am considering replacing one of the two floppy drives with a 1.44Mb, 3.5" diskette drive. While I'm at it, I might also replace the other floppy drive with a 1.2Mb, 5.25" floppy drive. The floppy controller in my system right now, according to a technical consultant at the Taiwanese company (Wugo)'s US office, will not handle high-density drives. Hence, I expect I'll have to get a new controller card along with the new drive or drives. Some local hardware dealers have cautioned me that the high-density drives (1.44Mb/3.5" and 1.2Mb/5.25") frequently do not work well on XT clones, due to the restrictions imposed by the 8-bit data path (as opposed to the 16-bit data path on AT's and clones). One dealer simply dismissed the whole idea out of hand as unworkable. Another said it might work *if* I use good drives; he specifically recommended the Sony 1.44Mb/3.5" drive, and told me to avoid the Toshiba 1.44Mb drive, based on his own experience. Has anyone else on the net tried to add a high-density drive (3.5" or 5.25") to an XT or clone? What happened? Should I stick to -- or avoid -- certain specific makes of drive and/or controller? My current system, as best I can tell, handles the 360Kb floppies very well. I have heard people caution, for instance, against trying floppy I/O at "turbo" speed; however, I routinely run my system at 8 MHz and do floppy I/O with no problems at all. When I ran the FASTBACK PLUS "DMA test", it rated my system as passing "fast DMA" at 8 MHz. Might this mean I have a better-than-even chance of success with a high-density drive in my system? Or is 360Kb floppy performance at "turbo" speed not really any kind of indicator of what will happen with a 1.44Mb drive? -- Rich Wales // UCLA Computer Science Department // +1 (213) 825-5683 3531 Boelter Hall // Los Angeles, California 90024-1596 // USA wales@CS.UCLA.EDU ...!(uunet,ucbvax,rutgers)!cs.ucla.edu!wales "A monk, a clone, and a Ferengi decided to go bowling together . . ."
cww@ndmath.UUCP (Clarence W. Wilkerson) (01/03/89)
You need a new disk controller board, for example the Western Digital Fox board. You'll need the one with built-in BIOS rom to support the new drives. It comes in either a 2 drive or 4 drive model. Depending on the version of DOS being used, you may need a device driver. I have not used the Toshiba 1.44. However, I have the 720K and 1.2k versions, and they work fine. I have not used the wd card, but have seen it advertised for about $60, and some generics for even less. The advice about brands, etc sounds self-serving on the dealer's part to me.
hlison@bbn.com (Herb Lison) (01/05/89)
In article <19248@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> wales@CS.UCLA.EDU (Rich Wales) writes: >I have a 2-year-old Taiwanese turbo (4.77/8.0 MHz) XT clone with a 30Mb >hard disk and two 360Kb, 5.25" floppy drives. > >I am considering replacing one of the two floppy drives with a 1.44Mb, >3.5" diskette drive. While I'm at it, I might also replace the other >floppy drive with a 1.2Mb, 5.25" floppy drive. I used a Western Digital controller to drive a 3.5 floppy and a 360Kb standard floppy with no discernible problems. The WD controller handles all the combinations you can think of, so I would guess it would work with a 1.2Mb floppy as well.
berger@clio.las.uiuc.edu (01/06/89)
I use a Micro Solutions Compaticard on my XT clone. I run 8",
5.25" DSDD and HD, and 3.5" 1.44 megabyte diskettes on my com-
puter. I have two floppy disk controllers and 5 floppy drives.
Micro Solutions supplies a device driver, so BIOS support of
the drives is unnecessary.
Most XT clones do not have proper BIOS support for the high
density drives, so be sure you get an updated bios, intelligent
controller, or device driver to load.
Mike Berger
Department of Statistics
University of Illinois
berger@clio.las.uiuc.edu
{convex | pur-ee}!uiucuxc!clio!berger