dkonerding@eagle.wesleyan.edu (Rafael Juarez) (03/09/91)
Recently I mail-ordered a new ST277R (65meg) HD to replace my dying (sadly, one year old) 40meg, which is MFM. I also purchased a Seagate ST22R(?) controller for to run the 277R, which is an RLL drive. The drive arrived, and I diagnosed the ills of the old drive, which were entirely fixable. The new controller card did not. Since I had a two-controller cable, I attached both the MFM drive and the new RLL drive to my old MFM controller, and got them working fine- both at 42meg, of course. I called the mail-order company, who told me the controller had been damaged in shipping, so they were sending, instead, a Western Digital controller- a 1006, I believe. They told me that although they weren't charging me any more for this new one, it was better. This leads to two questions: is the WDC 1006 a better controller, and what makes a better controller? And, would it be prudent to attach my old MFM (a CMS 42meg ST251-1) to the new controller card? Now, I hear people asking whether this can be done, and I hear both "yes" and "no" for various reasons. In fact, assuming I can't format the old MFM as a 65 meg, can I use the new RLL controller to format it as an old MFM (Disk Manager allows you to select drive configuration by name, but other low-level formatters don't) for safety's sake? Or, since I'll still have the old controller, can I attach both controllers, each connected to its proper drive? Thanks. -- David Konerding, Wesleyan University DKONERDING@EAGLE.WESLEYAN.EDU root%raphael.uucp@uhasun.hartford.edu (if you don't mind, could you CC to this address? It doesn't seem to work very well. Throw in a CC to root@raphael.uucp, which should work, but doesn't. Thanks)