MFM/RLL data recovery

OK, I posted about this a few weeks ago and now I have some more information. The drives in question are a ST-225 20MB (615/4/17) that came out of an XT (so would have been using a 8-bit controller) and a ST-238R 30MB (615/4/26) of unknown origin. I don't have or even know what the original controllers were, the machines were gutted/given away years ago by the owners. I have a 386 testbed which I'm using, and plan to laplink the files over to another machine once they are accessible. The only card in the 386 is a VGA card. Turbo is off. I have the following controllers: - WD1002A-27X 8-bit RLL - Adaptec ACB-2370A S2 16-bit RLL/floppy - WD1002SV-SR2 16-bit RLL/floppy - Everex EV-346 16-bit MFM/floppy I also have two Miniscribe 8438 30MB RLL drives. However, they were used with the 27X, which means the geometry is ambiguous depending on how the jumpers were set when it was formatted. Now, I'm either doing something wrong or all these drives are dead. I am using a floppy cable with a twist in it and a 20-pin data cable. All of the drives spin up (the Miniscribes needed a little coaxing) and sound "healthy" as they dance their little self-test jigs. Here's where the trouble starts. I tried the ST-238R with all three of the RLL controllers. With the 27X and with no hard drive entered in the NVRAM setup, since the BIOS can't be disabled, it runs the BIOS, which can't figure out what's going on and returns a 1701 POST code. With both of the 16-bit RLL controllers, 615/4/26 entered in the NVRAM and the controller BIOS disabled, the drive makes a repetitive seeking sound like an ECC retry about twice a second, until eventually the BIOS gives up and returns Drive C: failure. What this seems to indicate to me is that the drive was formatted with different geometry, or the tracks have drifted so bad it can't get its bearings. I also tried the Miniscribe drives with the 27X for kicks. Everything sounds normal, including the long growl that I remember that drive/controller combo doing during POST. But, a 1701 is returned, which isn't normal - this drive *used* to work with this exact controller. The only MFM controller I have is the Everex, so I tried the ST-225 with that one, entering 615/4/17 in the NVRAM and disabling its BIOS. Unfortunately, I get mostly the same behavior as with the ST-238R; except that with this drive, the retry clicks are about a second or two apart. Eventually the BIOS gives up anyway. I'm fresh out of ideas at this point. Maybe I have a bad cable? Do I need to find the exact controller the drives were paired with - what were the most common ones for each drive? Is the 386 the problem, too fast for these cards? -- Ryan Underwood, <nemesis at icequake.net>