On Thu, Jan 24, 2008 at 07:16:01AM +0000, Peter Hicks wrote:
Hi, Peter,
Ethan Dicks wrote:
So you are saying that this drive wasn't
originally used with this
controller?
Correct. It was from an RM Nimbus AX/2, long dead now unfortunately. I
may get lucky and be able to get some hardware specs from RM, although I
don't rate my chances.
Ah... then you will need to find if _any_ PC controller is compatible
with that.
Gotcha. There is data on the drive already,
that's the reason I want to
try to read what's on the disk. Even if I pull off a 60Mb binary image and
have to do something else to extract the data - that's fine. It's really a
one-off operation since I believe there's still a copy of the ancient RM
Net 3.1 software on the disk.
Obviously that makes the attempt more important.
That brings back the memories. Yes, G=C800:5 invokes
the low-level format
routine on the card. The manual with the ST11R describes this in brief.
At this point, you don't want to do that - you'll lose your data.
I am not so familiar with the nuances of cross-controller compatibility to
even begin to recommend how you could attack the problem. One solution
could be this as-yet-un-invented "Catweasel-like hard drive controller" that
folks have been discussing on and off here - take a raw image of the disk,
then parse out the transitions into address marks, sync marks, tracks,
sectors, etc., then turn it into a 60MB mountable disk image.
I don't know anything about the RM Nimbus AX/2, but knowing how it low-level
formats the drive is likely to be an essential part of the puzzle.
One of the big benefits when the PC world switched from analog recording
to IDE was that it became much simpler to move drives from machine to
machine - all you really had to worry about is track/head/sector geometry,
not flux transitions and how they were grouped.
-ethan
--
Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 24-Jan-2008 at 07:29 Z
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Ethan.Dicks at
usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html