victoro@crash.cts.com (Victor O'Rear) (01/16/91)
HELP! I bought a XT1065 Maxtor 65 Meg drive at the Swap Meet and everything looked great, so I decided to try a RLL controller as many Maxtor drive are RLL capable even though the company hasn't "certified" them. After success- fully formating the drive I noticed a raft of errors with OpTune and so tried to reformat under a MFM controller (both WD controllers). Now I get errors during Fdisk (Error reading Fixed Disk) or error 20's during the BIOS low-level fromat. Once a Fdisk "worked" with 492 sectors out of a possible 918 reported and the first partition started at 58. I bought the drive from a J.R. Radeffer of BBS in Costa Mesa, CA. But the phone-number was crossed with another business, and the business it was supposed to connect to was not BBC, but then I expect that he does this business as a sideline. So either I have a reputable businessman that's hard to get to, or I've been taken. Either way - I could use your help. Oh, I've called Maxtor and they're very busy but promise to call be back soon but I may have physically damaged the drive - but the support person I talked with had to check with his supervision before really committing to that answer.. .
i1neal@exnet.iastate.edu (Neal Rauhauser -- ELT Computer Applications Group) (01/17/91)
* foolishly formatting an MFM drive as RLL* >RLL capable even though the company hasn't "certified" them. After success- *even more foolish, using OpTune on an RLL formatted MFM disk >fully formating the drive I noticed a raft of errors with OpTune and so tried >to reformat under a MFM controller (both WD controllers). OpTune is poison for RLL formatted MFM disks, I've heard of this sort of problem a couple of times before this. It is quite possible to hose a perfectly good MFM/RLL disk by changing the formats.(Why? Don't know, sure wish I could un-fuck the 110 meg RLL disk I use - works fine _except_ for SpinRite, which has a bird when trying to low level format. And it used to take SpinRite.) Solution to your problem: Mitsubishi MB535 (42 meg MFM/ 65 meg RLL) disks are dual rated and cost $256 + shipping. Neal i1neal@exnet.iastate.edu
boyd@cs.unca.edu (Mark Boyd) (01/17/91)
I use OpTune( good program ) regularly on several RLL formated MFM disks. I also use it on a Mitsubushi MB535 ( great drive value! ). I don't see why "Optune is poison for RLL formatted MFM disks". It certainly isn't for mine. Mark Boyd boyd@cs.unca.edu