ron@mlfarm.UUCP (Ronald Florence) (07/26/89)
Some weeks ago I posted an article requesting suggestions or recommendations of a reliable, fast hard disk as a substitute for or addition to the 70 Meg disk in my ps2/80. I received a number of useful suggestions: Mark Davis (davis@cs.unc.edu) described his experiences installing a Micropolis 1355 drive in a ps2/60, which has the same ESDI controller as the ps2/80. Mark was ambitious enough to make his own cables (from JDL and Radio Shack parts), and passed along the valuable suggestion of using the Disk Manager (ps/2) program to low-level format a non-IBM ESDI disk so it can be recognized by the ps2 controller. Tom Friedel (tpf@ms.uky.edu) offered to sell his CMS 120 Meg drive, which is designed for the ps2/50 and 70. Nick Pemberton (nick@aimed) suggested Priam disks, although his own experience was with an Intel machine. Vince Guarna (guarna@uicsrd.csrd,uiuc.edu) was also searching for a ps2/80 upgrade, and recommended Priam or CMS drives. Jim Mott (jim@homectl) wanted to hear whatever responses I got (and snuck in a boost for AIX). What did I do? I bought a 182 Megabyte CDC ESDI disk, rated at 16.5 ms. The vendor supplied a $30 CDC version of the Disk Manager program. The CDC disk is configured with 769 cylinders, 9 heads, 34 sectors. Disk Manager maps the disk to a configuration of 151 cylinders, 64 heads, 32 sectors, and the ps2 controller accepts that configuration. Re-installing Xenix (2.2.3) was a snap, once I used the dkinit program to change the hard disk parameters from the default disk configuration (which Xenix recognized) to the remapped parameters. (I actually installed the system with the original disk parameters, then discovered that the the ps2 wouldn't boot from the hard disk.) The Disk Manager program also remaps the bad tracks to their equivalents in the ps2 configuration. I have not run any benchmark tests, but the disk seems much quicker than the original equipment disk. My thanks to everyone who offered advice and suggestions. -- Ronald Florence ...{hsi!aati,rayssd}!mlfarm!ron