[comp.sys.amiga] Using IBM hardrives and the Wedge

crb@raybed2.UUCP (CHRIS BURTTON) (03/05/88)

	There have been a few questions about the Wedge and using
	IBM harddrives with the Amiga.  Since the Wedge allows using
	an IBM drive with the Amiga, this might answer both questions.
	
	The Wedge is designed for a Western Digital WX2 controller.
	I'm using a WX1 and it works fine (Or is it designed for a WX1
	and I'm using a WX2???).  It apparently will 
	work with any drive the WX2 will control, that being a number
	of different drives.  I'm using a Seagate.  So anyway...

	I've had a Wedge for about a month and had no real problem
	with it.  The first time I formatted it, I got a disk error
	but used it anyway.  It started to give me some strange errors
	so I reformatted it and haven't had any problems since.  The
	quality of the interface board is very good.

	The drive is fast enought that I think that if it was
	available when I bought my extra 2meg of memory, I 
	would have got the drive instead.  It makes a world of
	difference in the useability of the Amiga.

	For formatting, it comes with it's own low level format
	program.  The higher level format is done with the Amiga's
	Format command.  One potential problem that I haven't   
	encountered yet, is that bad sectors are not mapped out and 
	avoided.  Apparently the way to avoid bad sectors is to
	partition around them.  Not a very good solution.  There is
	supposed to be new software RSN to take care of that problem.

	For prices I believe that it was $160-$170 for the Wedge
	interface.  They also had good prices on HardDrives.



	Chris Burton
	..!rayssd!raybed2!crb

	These are indeed my opinions.  All mine, heh, heh....