impett@super.super.org (Richard L Impett) (09/14/90)
There has been quite of bit of discussion in several of the newgroups about formatting MFM disks as RLL. I have one comment, and several questions. First, I have been running a Miniscribe 3650 (an MFM disk, and a slow one at that!) as an RLL disk for about 3 years, with no problem. In fact, Northgate sold many of these in their first system- the A-turbo. Well, I guess I should NOT say no problem, but the 1 problem I had I think was due to a disk controller incompatibility, not a drive problem. After installing an extended/expanded memory board, I noticed that occasionally the hard disk would hang (light would come on, stay on, and I would have to re-boot). This problem I solved (I think!) by changing from an OMTI RLL disk controller to a Western Digital RLL disk controller- a WD1006V-SR2. This brings up some new questions. I noticed when reformatting my hard disk that the WD controller gave me the option of 26 or 31 sectors. Has anyone out there in netland tried 31 sectors/track? What disks can I expect this to work with? Do you still get 1:1 interleaving (the sectors are now closer together)? I know that the Perstor controllers (ARRL) format to 31 sectors. How much difference is there between the 31 sector mode of the Western Digital controllers and the Perstor controllers? I called the Western Digital technical support people. They named a few (very few!) disks that would support 31 sectors, but they are very conservative (i.e. they told me I should not be running my 3650 at 26 sectors!). I would be interested in knowing what experiences others have had with WD 31 sector formatting. Send e-mail to impett@super.org and I will summarize later to this newsgroup. Thanks. Rick Impett