29 Aug
2006
29 Aug
'06
5:29 p.m.
For the DEC uVAX gurus out there...
Which I am not, but I've worked with ST412-interfaced hard drives at a
pretty low level.
[...]
Since I don't have (at least to my knowledge, yet)
a functional VAX that
might do the trick, I've removed each drive and attached it to a known
working WD1002-WA2 controller [2] running on a 40Mhz 386 box, with
The ST412 interface (often incorrectly called the ST506 interface, but
anyway) is a 'raw' interface. That is, the data lines are essentally is
squared-up version of the signal to/from the read/write head. There are
restrictions on the pulse rate, etc, but apart from that it's up to you
(the controller) to decide on how you're going to encode the data, how
you're going to mark the start of the sector, and so on.
Anf there's no reason to assume that 2 different controllers will do it
the saem way.
In other words, there's no reason to assume a PC-based controller will
recognise data written by a DEC controller.
-tony