dsrekrg@prism.gatech.EDU (Rob Gibson) (11/18/90)
Many thanks to all who responded to my question. The following is a compilation of those responses. Rob Gibson, WREK 91.1 MHz, 40000 watts Georgia Tech, Atlanta Georgia, 30332 404/894-2468 ARPA: dsrekrg@prism.gatech.edu --------------------------------------------------------------------- From: andrew@ramona.Cary.NC.US (Andrew Ernest) Which model of the model 80? There are both ESDI and SCSI model 80's available now. If it's one of the ESDI systems, I'm afraid IBM decided on a proprietary low-level format which they will not disclose. If you try to put a non-IBM ESDI drive in the system, it will not work. What you *can* do is buy a non-IBM ESDI disk controller. However, this will only work with DOS for sure (since DOS will use the controller's BIOS). I do not know whether or not OS/2 or AIX will work with the controller. If it's a SCSI model 80, adding another SCSI drive of any brand should work fine. If he's just running DOS, yeah, he can get a controller from Western Digital or any of the other big names in the controller business. The non-IBM controllers are usually faster too. And I *think* he can still use the IBM drive with the new controller. I *think* he will just have to low-level format it with the new controller. I *think* this will just blow away IBM's proprietary format and give him a perfectly normal drive. If your friend is ready to chuck the IBM drive anyway, he might as well give it a try. I'm pretty sure the big name controllers work under OS/2 also. He'll have to do some research about that. I'm not so sure about AIX. In fact, I doubt it. If he intends to use AIX, I would recommend buying the IBM SCSI adapter and then hanging a non-IBM SCSI drive off of it. AIX supports only the IBM SCSI adapter but it will support any brand of SCSI drive attached to it. The ESDI and SCSI adapters get along fine together so there would be no need to pull the old ESDI controller and drive if he chose this option. From: nigam@mwunix.mitre.org (Alok Nigam) I have (just) installed a Storage Dimensions (Maxtor XT4380E) 300MB disk in a PS/2 Model 80 using the existing IBM ESDI controller. Just so you know its possible. From: flusekw@ucs.indiana.edu (Bill Flusek) I don't know which Model 80 you currently have, but it is my understanding that the Model 80-041 (16 Mhz, 40 MB hard drive) does not have an ESDI controller, but the rest of the 'old' Model 80's do have one. The newer Model 80's all come with SCSI controllers for the hard disk drive. I have worked with drives out of several Model 80's and Model 60's and I do know that the controllers are not the same for the 80-041 and the 80-071, 80-111 and 80-311. The 70, 115 and 314 MB drives will all work on the same controller and the machine will hold two internally, if you don't have the internal 5.25" drive. The controller is also set up for running two of the drives. I have a PS/2 Model 80-311 and for a short time I had a 115 MB ESDI drive in it with the 314. The 115 MB drive was also in a Model 80-071 for a short time. If you are interested in a slightly used 40 MB MFM IBM drive or a 115 MB ESDI IBM drive (with or without controller), let me know and I might be able to help you out with getting one. (I have one of each around at the present time.) I have also found out through experimentation, that you can actually put the 2MB memory SIMMs for the Model 80-111 and Model 80-311 on the Motherboard for the 80-071 and 80-041 and they work just fine. I swapped out the 1MB SIMMs in an 80-071 for 2MB SIMMs and took it to 4 MB with no problems at all. It was a nice way to use some extra 2MB SIMMs and take the machine up to 4MB. I hope the information above is of some help. From: megabyte@chinet.chi.il.us (Mark E. Sunderlin) I'd be interested in whatever you hear as I have a user that also wwants to ass a second disk drive to his model 80. From: medici@dorm.rutgers.edu (Mark Medici) I've got 5 PS/2-80 systems (3 @16MHz, 2@20MHz) with dual fixed drives. All of these use the standard IBM ESDI disk controller. Most have a Core HC310 300MB ESDI fixed disk as drive 0, and the stock IBM 70MB or 100MB ESDI drive as drive 1. The only problem thus far encountered is one system occaisionally dying under NetWare/386 3.1 during massive writes. I have not been able to pinpoint the problem yet, but suspect a faulty 300MB drive. From: bchin@is-next.umd.edu (Bill Chin) Older PS/2 Model 80's have ESDI controllers (check with your reference disk, or if your 80 is older than six months ), however, they are _not_ compatible with many other (third party) ESDI's. There are a few manufacturers like Core that make specialized drives for PS/2 ESDI's. Instead, I installed a second controller card, a Future Domain MCS-350 SCSI controller and Maxtor XT8760s and therefore bypassed the whole problem. BTW, the new IBM SCSI controllers are real nice! Co-developed with Core, they're bus mastering, fully take advantage of the Microchannel interface, supports SCSI (big plus), and can be expanded with on-board cache memory. So, the final answer is you have to hunt down and make _sure_ that the drive does support the PS/2's (ie. buy IBM) or buy a new controller that can take third party drives. Good luck! Sorry I couldn't give you specific HD's that'll work, but that route was just too difficult and costly. From: utep-vaxa!sam@cs.utexas.edu (samuel pedroza) The controller depends on which 8580 you have. The -041 has an ST-506 controller for a 40MB fixed disk. The -071, -111, -311 models have an ESDI controller, and the newer -A21,-121,-A31, and -321 have SCSI adapter interfaces. From: EAF%res-c4.prime.com@RELAY.CS.NET I did it the hard way. Finally succeded in adding an ESDI Micropolis 1355 to my model 80. The major secret is getting ONTRACK Disk Manager for the PS/2. It makes installation relatively easy. I had tried formatting using the Reference disk using cntl-A in order to access the advanced features. That always failed. Ontrack did it automatically all the way from recognizing my disk (type 1) to completing the low level format.