26 Jan
2004
26 Jan
'04
4:46 p.m.
In the last month, I removed an ISA MFM (or possibly RLL) card from my
PC. I wasn't using the HD capabilites of the card, However. I was only
using the floppy controller, since I accidently fried the floppy
controller on the MB. I am also not using the MB IDE interface. I am
using an Adaptec scsi card.
I toyed around with a driver at one point that would allow a person to
mix mfm with modern drives. I can't recall what it was called, Though.
I think I found it on Simtel, but I'm not sure.
Chad Fernandez
Michigan, USA
Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
I haven't played with MFM hard drives and
controllers in a LONG time
(about 10 years now) so I have some questions.
I'll start off easy. Should there be any reason an old 16-bit ISA MFM
controller won't work properly in a Pentium-class PC with ISA and PCI
slots? I imagine I would just have to configure the BIOS to reserve the
proper interrupt (I believe it's 14, correct?) for the MFM controller.
I did all this but the MFM controller wreaked havoc on the system. It
killed the on-board floppy disk and IDE controllers (not physically killed
but basically disabled them and the system couldn't boot).
I'm trying to determine if there is a natural conflict before I venture
forth with this configuration. This may be a problem related to the PC
I'm trying to plug the card into because there are other oddities with the
IDE controller that is preventing the system from booting with 4 hard
drives installed (2 per IDE interface). It halts after it auto-recognizes
the drives on the primary controller. Weird.
Anyway, any insight would be appreciated.
I'm going to do more experimentation in the meantime. I'll get another PC
with ISA and PCI slots to work with, and will also find an old 386 to test
the MFM controller on to make sure it is working fine.