src@cs.odu.edu (Scott R. Chilcote) (03/02/89)
A couple of months ago, I posted asking for help with a hard drive project I'd been working on for my ST. I received lots of suggestions and some very good advice. I especially thank the Atari reps who offered help -- some good people work there. I'd like to pass along some of the experience I've gained from all this. The drive I built is comprised of a Seagate ST-277R hard disk, an Adaptec 4070 controller board, and a Supra host adapter board. The result is a 60 Meg (formatted) hard disk drive with a battery backed clock/calendar, DMA pass-through, and the potential to add a second inexpensive RLL drive easily. Rule number 1: Don't trust mail-order!! I looked at ads in Computer Slobber magazine until I found some really low prices on the hard drive and Adaptec board. I stayed with the larger advertisements, thinking that those with the money to advertise big would be more reputable. I wound up with a bad hard disk _and_ a bad controller board for my efforts. The hard disk would not reinitia- lize to track zero. The controller board caused crashing whenever a file was read from the hard disk. And although I have some technical experience, it takes a major investment in equipment and understanding to troubleshoot a setup like this. Expect to get burned! My approach was to call each company, describe the problem, and send the item back for testing. I had to call Seagate directly about the first hard drive before the mail order company would accept a return. It took three days of repetitive dialing and "eternal hold" to reach a human being at Seagate -- but after that they were quite helpful. They described the problem with the drive and said that it needed to be replaced. They also told me the mail order company I was dealing with -- Computer Terminal -- was not an official Seagate dealer and was not supported by them. Supra was the shining star of the group. The help I received from them was invaluable. The fellow I spoke to there (Mark) warned me that bad drives and bad controllers (even counterfiet ones!) were "out there". They had me return my Supra board, but found nothing wrong with it. They replaced a couple of the chips with new revisions anyway, and mailed it back. I had originally chosen Supra because their SCSI Host Adapter was cheaper than ICDs, and because their software wasn't copy protected and _was_ highly regarded. Supra's HD utilities are PD, and can be downloaded from GEnie. Great people! My Adaptec board was the major source of problems. The 4070 needs to be shielded in order to work, when installed against the bottom of the hard disk (it is drilled for mounting in that position). At Supra's suggestion, I enclosed a piece of aluminum foil in some cardboard, connected an alligator clip to the foil and grounded it, made sure the whole assembly was insulated, and slipped it between the controller and the hard drive. This provided a good shield. Unfortunately the first Adaptec controller was bad, in an insidious manner. It gave errors exactly as if the shielding was inadequate (noise interference). This caused the programs I executed from the hard drive to bomb immediately. Finally I got permission to mail this board back to Computer Surplus, while it was barely in warranty. They sent me a replacement as soon as they had one, in spite of the fact that in the meantime, they'd changed distributors -- and the price was now $40 higher! Pretty decent of them, considering. So, after three months of hassles, about $60 in phone calls and about $700 in hardware -- I have a functioning drive. I'm very pleased now that it works! Backing up a 60 meg drive onto floppies will be formidable, but it will take a long time to fill up this much space. I suggest that anyone planning on making an ST hard disk in this challenging manner have lots of forbearance. One has to constantly trade the urge to get momentary satisfaction for long-term results! >>>Scott -- ___________________________________________________________________________ |.--------------------------------..---------------------------------------.| || Usenet: src@xanth.UUCP || || || Arpa: src@xanth.cs.odu.edu || "If you love something, set it || || Earth: Scott R. Chilcote || free. || || || If it doesn't return, || || ||| "Sure, Jack, we || Hunt it down and kill it!" || || ||| trust you. But will || || || / | \ will you respect us || -- Klingon Proverb || || / | \ in the morning?" || || |:________________________________:'---------------------------------------'| '---------------------------------------------------------------------------'