marvin@jungfrau.UUCP (Rico und Jan) (09/19/88)
In article <9160@cup.portal.com> Ric_I_Clayton@cup.portal.com writes: > > Here's my Hard Disk Story: > > I had an Atari SH204 20Meg Hard Disk. I needed more disk space and >didn't want to spend another $600 for 20megs. (Not to mention the fact >that the SH204 has no Daisy-chain port.) This is what I ended up with: > > (From my SH204) > o Seagate ST225 20Meg Hard Disk > o Adaptec 4000 Controller > > (From my local Hard Disk Dealer) > o Seagate ST251 42Meg Hard Disk > > (From ICD) > o Host Adaptor Board > o 5 1/4 Hard Disk Case (w/HDA Mounting Kit & Cutout) > o Controller-to-Disk Cable Set > o 36" DMA Cable > >The only problems I had were with the Hard Drive >Case. Some of the drive bracket mounting holes were miss-aligned and had >to be re-drilled, the hardware-kit (screws,etc) didn't have the right >hardware, and space is _real_ tight inside the case. Nothing a drill and >a trip to the hardware store wouldn't solve. Also, saving the leftover >SH204 parts gives me a head-start on my next storage increase. By just >adding an RLL controller, a 96Mb drive, and replacing the PAL chip on the ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >Atari Host Adaptor board, I'll have more storage than I'll possibly need. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ This is what I thought, too. I replaced the Adaptec 4000 controller by the 4070, which is completely compatible with the 4000, except that it uses RLL encoding scheme instead of MFM. I also bought a second drive, a Seagate ST157R, which is RLL and has a capacity of 49MB. The old drive in the SH204 was (still is) an Tandon TM262, which is a 3.5", MFM, 20MB drive. I checked out with Tandon, if that drive accepts RLL (i.e. if it has plated media), and they said yes (although it was not certified for it). Formatting the Tandon drive didn't cause any problems, but, however, it has quite a lot of read errors. The errors do not appear in specific sectors, but just randomly anywhere, especially on the cylinders with low numbers, i.e. on the inner cylinders of the drive. It looks like it mostly works just perfectly, but sometimes there are these read errors. It seems that timing margins are so close, that it does not work properly from time to time. A few days ago I got the PAL replacement from BMS. It doesn't help very much, except that read errors are now 'officialy' being recognized. If anybody is out there, who has similar experience, or who has a solution, please post/mail it... Tomas *********************************************************************** Disclaimer: I'm a student at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zuerich, Switzerland, studying Computer Science ('Informatik' as we call it in German). UUCP: ...!mcvax!ethz!jungfrau!marvin (marvin@ethz.UUCP) Surface: Tomas Felner, Quellenstrasse 30, 8005 Zuerich, Switzerland