stretch@EMUNIX.EMICH.EDU (Brian Stretch) (08/23/90)
Stopped by my local PC dealer yesterday, and guess what? He had a "great
deal" for me.. a 320 meg ESDI HD for ~$1000. Sound familiar, folks?
Did someone go out of business? A whole drive company, or a large supplier?
Or does someone know something we don't?
(BTW, he mentioned having trouble with some of the larger-size Connor
drives.. anyone here on Usenet have any problems with those? I'm probably
going to need a larger hard drive soon, in the <$500 range hopefully..)
---Brian Stretch (stretch@emunix.emich.edu)dts@STRATUS.COM (Daniel Senie) (08/29/90)
MiniScribe went belly up many months ago. They were reported to have SERIOUS quality problems with their productss, which probably led to their downfall. Their 320MB drives are selling as low as $900. Just make sure you back up everything daily... -- Daniel Senie UUCP: uunet!lectroid!dts Stratus Computer, Inc. ARPA: dts@lectroid.sw.stratus.com 55 Fairbanks Blvd. CSRV: 74176,1347 Marlboro, MA 01752 TEL.: 508 - 460 - 2686
pjh@mccc.uucp (Pete Holsberg) (08/30/90)
Besides an ESDI controller and the drive, what else do I need in order to plunk an ESDI drive into a 386/AT? Must my BIOS be able to handle "type 47"? Must the controller be more sophisticated than a WD1007A? Do I need any driver software? Thanks. Pete -- Prof. Peter J. Holsberg Mercer County Community College Voice: 609-586-4800 Engineering Technology, Computers and Math UUCP:...!princeton!mccc!pjh 1200 Old Trenton Road, Trenton, NJ 08690 Internet: pjh@mccc.edu Trenton Computer Festival -- 4/20-21/91
chaz@chinet.chi.il.us (Charlie Kestner) (08/31/90)
In article <1990Aug30.015747.8628@mccc.uucp> pjh@mccc.edu (Pete Holsberg) writes: >Besides an ESDI controller and the drive, what else do I need in order >to plunk an ESDI drive into a 386/AT? Must my BIOS be able to handle >"type 47"? Must the controller be more sophisticated than a WD1007A? >Do I need any driver software? > You will most likely need a special formatting program such as Disk Manager. This is commonly bundled with the drive. If not, it is available at most any outfit that sells software. It allows you to format the drive BEYOND that silly 1024-cylinder limit of DOS (almost ALL the "big" drives have MORE than 1024 cyls). You will end up with two files in your root of C:, DMDRVR.BIN and XBIOS.OVL. You will have to put a "device=dmdrvr.bin" line in CONFIG.SYS. You may simply lie to the CMOS regarding your drive type. (I.e., my box came with a 157M ESDI drive w/Disk Manager. The AMI CMOS does support Type 47, but the system's house simply told it "10M". It all worked fine.) I gather that another way to get around this is if your controller card has it's own BIOS. You lie to the controller card (heh, heh) and just tell it the drive has LESS than 1024 cylinders. Don't ask ME how this works, but I've been assured by VERY knowledgeable people that it DOES work! Apparently, the smart controller card tells DOS that you have LESS cylinders, but MORE heads (than the drive really has). Like I said, I'm feeding you this on hearsay... A caveat on Disk Manager: Apparently, CHKDSK likes to puke with Disk Manager if you have your drives set up with 512-byte sectors. If this is the case, you will need to order OnTrack's (Disk Manager's daddy) Utilities. (They socked me $ 53.00 (half list price) for same when I sent in my Disk Manager registration card.) BTW, if you DON'T use something like Disk Manager, you will lose EVERY cylinder above 1024. (Tried it already, so I know the sad truth.)
pjh@mccc.uucp (Pete Holsberg) (09/01/90)
In article <1990Aug31.025613.13790@chinet.chi.il.us> chaz@chinet.chi.il.us (Charlie Kestner) writes: =In article <1990Aug30.015747.8628@mccc.uucp> pjh@mccc.edu (Pete Holsberg) writes: =>Besides an ESDI controller and the drive, what else do I need in order =>to plunk an ESDI drive into a 386/AT? Must my BIOS be able to handle =>"type 47"? Must the controller be more sophisticated than a WD1007A? =>Do I need any driver software? => = = You will most likely need a special formatting program such as =Disk Manager. Thanks. I think you're saying that I don't need to change the BIOS if I lie to it, right? What about swapping a 150MB MFM drive (also more than 1024 cyls) for a 72 MB? Just lie to the BIOS and leave it up to DM? Pete -- Prof. Peter J. Holsberg Mercer County Community College Voice: 609-586-4800 Engineering Technology, Computers and Math UUCP:...!princeton!mccc!pjh 1200 Old Trenton Road, Trenton, NJ 08690 Internet: pjh@mccc.edu Trenton Computer Festival -- 4/20-21/91