That's a
perfectluy good soltuion _if the drive is in a PC/XT or
similar). It's no good (AFAIK) if the drive is in some other machine
which happens to have an ST412-compatible drive interface (looking
around me, I see a DEC RAinbow, a PRO35, the external hard disk box for
my TRS-80 Model 4, a Xerox Daybreak, a PERQ, a couple of HP drive units,
etc all of which fall into that category...)
With this particular machine, yes, it is a first-generation Compaq Deskpro
(Intel 8086) with 8-bit ISA slots.
I'm in the same boat with even my SGI IRIS 1400. Replacing the Vertex v170
ST412/506 drive with anything else would (at this point) be nearly
impossible.
I cna think of at least 4 categories of machines :
1) Those with an 8 or 16 bit ISA bus. For which there are solutions, like
the XT-IDE + CF card
2) Machines that require an ST412-type drive, but can take any geometry,
and will use all of it.
3) Machines that have a limited number of differnet geometries they can
use, but don't check the drive carefully. If the drive has more
heads/cylinders that the machine thinks it should do, the machine doesn't
use all the disk space, but it does work
4) Machines that require one of a limited numebr of geometries, and check
the drive to make sure it matches. If the selected gheometry says 4
hears, and the drive has 6, the machine will not use said drive.
The last are by far the worst to find replacement drives for...
-tony