brennan@merk.UUCP (Rich Brennan) (01/08/89)
From the email I've received, and the one posting I've read, it looks like the WD1007 (or WD1005) talks ESDI to the drive, and talks "WD1010" to the PC/AT bus. This is what the non-ESDI version of Xenix likes and needs. Apparently (thanks, Jim Morton of Applix) the WD1007 can handle 1:1 interleaved drives (track buffered?), while the recommended value for WD1005 is 3:1. There's another wrinkle to this, however. A year ago, before I gave up on this ESDI mess and got an RLL Priam, (you should see my controller and drive collection!), I got a WD1005 with a 4175 MAXTOR ESDI. I spent a week trying to get them to work and finally gave up. Recently, looking a little harder at the doc, I now see the the WD1005 only works with HARD SECTORED ESDI DRIVES. Unfortunately my 4175 is soft sectored. Ergo, Nogo. Of course the only place I could find that the MAXTOR was soft sectored was in a little diagram describing the ESDI "Configuration response bits". One asserted status bit is marked "soft sectored"! Was I the only person on the continent to order a soft sectored ESDI drive?!? I've ordered up my WD1007 which I hope will work with either soft or hard sectored ESDI drives (the OMTI 8620 does, but it doesn't talk the standard "WD1010"; you need "ESDI Xenix" to get the 8620 to work). I'll post info on the WD1007 when it arrives. Who knows, maybe it only works with "firm" sectored drives :-). You may also see a "for sale" notice for some controllers and drives, too! I can hardly wait until I can duke it out with the many flavors of the SCSI standard! Rrrrrich. -- ...!{uunet,linus!alliant}!merk!root Rich Brennan