rosenkra@hall.cray.com (Bill Rosenkranz) (08/25/89)
---- i have a sh204 (atari 20 MB) which i'd like to stuff a larger capacity drive mech in. the particulars are: drive mech model: Tandon TM 262 controller ROM: Atari C070736, YL-86-03 host adapter: Atari 6026266 Rev. C power supply: DELTA DPS-40BP Rev. 63 could someone recommend a 40-60 MB drive mechanism i could just plug in? i prefer not to switch controllers/host adapters if possible. if there are any electrical changes (jumpers, cable mods, etc) please let me know. will the power supply handle the new drive? i really want to just plug-and-play. reliability is highest criterion. seagate would be preferable, though others are ok if rugged (i have had good luck with st225's in PC's, even checking a portable thru baggage!). will the 3.x ahdi and friends work with this (recommended) drive? please respond by email. infinite thanx... -bill rosenkra@boston.cray.com rosenkra%boston@hall.cray.com rosenkra@ed.mit.edu ...!umn-sc!hall!boston!rosenkra
hcj@lzaz.ATT.COM (HC Johnson) (08/26/89)
In article <4481@hall.cray.com>, rosenkra@hall.cray.com (Bill Rosenkranz) writes: > ---- > i have a sh204 (atari 20 MB) which i'd like to stuff a larger capacity > drive mech in. the particulars are: > The SH204 circuit boards will support any two MFM drives. However, its rinky-dink power supply should not be asked to power them. -- Standalone boxes with power are avail for 20-100 Dollars. Power supplies alone are $30. Longer cables can be obtained from anyone supporting IBM clones, including Radio Shack. The formatter HDX will allow any drive to be formatted if you edit its data file. SCSI drives are the ones that are requiring special formatting code. Also, when buying a drive note the following. Many drives include a bad block list. Regretably, none of the public formatters allow you to use it. Remember that the adaptec 4000 controller (and atari clone) can correct only a burst of 9 bits, so a drive that shows > 5 bits (or so) in its error list is likely to come up with a fatal error. This is doubley unfortunate on the SH204 because it neglects to send the error back to the Atari. (Berkeley Micro Systems Oakland CA has a fix for this). The formatters talk about mapping out errors, but this is valid only for TOS formatted partitions, and the DATA area only. Fatals in the FAT or DIRECTORY will kill you. Personally, I hacked my Atari formatter to accept a bad block list and let Adaptec do what its best at; mapping out bad blocks. Howard C. Johnson ATT Bell Labs att!lzaz!hcj hcj@lzaz.att.com