20 Jun
2009
20 Jun
'09
12:06 a.m.
On Jun 19, 2009, at 10:40 PM, Mr Ian Primus wrote:
Anyone remember the difference between the various
Western Digital
MFM disk controllers? I've got a few in front of me right now, and
I'm trying to figure out which would be the best for this Compaq
Portable 286.
I've got the good ol' WD1002A-WX1, and what looks to be the bigger
verison, the WD1002S-WX2, then another, even longer card, the one
that came stock with the Compaq, the WD1015-PL03.
Now, here's the dilemma. The stock card won't respond to the usual
debug commands - they just freeze the computer. The original 20mb 3
1/2" Miniscribe hard drive is dead (won't even spin). I am going to
replace it with a similar 3 1/2" form factor drive - the NEC D3142.
(43mb! Woo!) I already got the drive formatted and working on the
small WD1002A-WX1 card, but it's been a while since I worked with
MFM controllers - and I seem to remember the WD1002S-WX2 being
faster or something.
Wow. I used to know *all* of those part numbers, have been
shaking my head trying to jog my memory for the past few minutes, but
it seems that info is just gone. :-(
Also, I don't remember the calculations for
optimum interleave, I
used 3, since that was the default....
You can use something like Spinrite to discover the proper
interleave for a disk subsystem, and it will even format in-place
(track at a time) and preserve data. I used it all the time, it was
quite good.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL