4 Apr
2005
4 Apr
'05
5:47 p.m.
From: "Jules Richardson" <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk>
Sent: Monday, April 04, 2005 7:23 PM
On Mon, 2005-04-04 at 19:00 -0500, Randy McLaughlin
wrote:
The incompatibilities are not a tolerance problem, when the same chipset is
used the BIOS can be different and not be compatible. But I've always found
that the same model controllers were interchangeable with no problems.
A few times I've seen different PC controllers from the same manufacturer
(i.e. WD or whatever) work from one model to another but not be able to boot
without a low-level formatting (booting from a floppy allows access).
Other times no compatibility at all and must be low-level formatted to do
anything.
As was pointed out if you know the drives were formatted on a 8 bit
controller just set the BIOS to no hard drive and don't even try the 16 bit
controllers, they would just be a waste of time. Your best bet would be to
try different 8 bit cards and boot to a floppy then do a "dir c:", repeat
until you've tried all cards.
Randy
www.s100-manuals.com
From: "Vintage Computer Festival"
<vcf at siconic.com>
Sent: Monday, April 04, 2005 6:14 PM
I was confused by the statement too. Are you saying that the same
*model* of controller won't necessarily work (due to different
tolerances in components say) - or just that different controllers that
happen to use a few common chips won't work?
The former would be a little alarming - the latter makes much more sense
and would seem like a given. (Maybe that's where Sellam was getting
confused?)
cheers
Jules On Mon, 4 Apr 2005, Randy McLaughlin wrote:
With Vintage as a domain name you should be familiar with the fact that
standards develop slowly.
Hard drive interfaces for the PC "standardized" with the AT, before that
people did what ever they wanted. Sometimes one controller would read a
disk from a different type of controller but it was just luck. If you are trying to recover files you are
probably wasting your time,
the
XT controllers used unique formatting and you will never read the data
off
of the drives without using controllers indentical with ones used
originally. It is not good enough to use the same brand or even
chipset.
This doesn't make much sense. Can you please explain further?