[comp.periphs] ESDI 15/20 Mbit Drives on 10 Mbit Controller?

davis@clocs.cs.unc.edu (Mark Davis) (01/05/90)

What happens when a 15 Megabits/sec ESDI drive is connected to a
10 Megabits/sec controller?

For example, what happens if I put a 760 Meg drive on a PS/2 with the
IBM ESDI Fixed Disk Drive Adapater/A in it?  I know a lot about such
installations, because I have have installed a Micropolis 1355, but
that was a 10 Mbits/sec drive.

If it works at all, will there be bad effects?  For example, from
reading the Technical Reference I don't see any way to set the
interleave on the IBM ESDI/A adapter.  Will very poor performance
result because the interleave is too agressive?  Or will it just write
to the disk at 10Mbits/sec, reducing the total space on the disk to
10/15 of rated?

I assume the same question applies to 20 Mbit/sec drives on the 15
Mbit/sec controllers.

Thanks - Mark (davis@cs.unc.edu or uunet!mcnc!davis)