4 Jun
2001
4 Jun
'01
8:39 a.m.
Saaay ... speaking of Z100 ... I'm just on my way to a place that has a couple
of Z100 "data separator" boards with a small aluminum brace attached. Is that
something that would be of interest?
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: "Don Maslin" <donm(a)cts.com>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Monday, June 04, 2001 1:05 PM
Subject: Re: 3.5" MFM hard disk
On Sat, 2 Jun 2001, Jeff Hellige wrote:
Sounds reasonable, Jeff. That way you only 'discard' 5mb instead of 15,
and apply the ST-225 to a machine that is more likely to let you use all
of it.
- don
Likely,
but you must be sure that it has at least 4 heads and 153
cylinders. The cylinder part is no problem - probably nothing available
today would have less :) Another factor to consider is that the ST-506
did not have buffered seek IIRC. That is not likely to be a concern
either, but if you were going from a modern controller to the 506 it
might be a problem.
What I was thinking was that I'd substitute a more readily
handy drive, such as a 225, knowing that it was larger and that most
of it's space would be wasted due to the differences in parameters,
but that there would surely be enough headroom there in the heads and
cylinders that it would hopefully work ok. I remember there being
some tolerance for running MFM drives at settings that didn't match
thier physical layout, as we had to do it on occasion when we had a
drive which didn't fit any of the 'normal' drive types in the
AMI/Phoenix/Award BIOS tables and it was before user-derfinable drive
types. Since the 506 is a full height, this might be a good
candidate to try and use my Tandon TM502 with. I also have a ST225,
which I like more than the Tandon, but I'll likely use it to replace
a faulty drive in a Z-100.
Jeff --
Collector of Classic Microcomputers and Video Game Systems:
Home of the TRS-80 Model 2000 FAQ File
http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lakes/6757