3.5" ESDI (was Re: 2.5" laptop SCSI drive standards?) - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

22 Sep 2009

On 9/22/09, Sridhar Ayengar <ploopster at gmail.com> wrote:
...
  Ethan Dicks wrote:
  On 9/22/09, Sridhar Ayengar <ploopster at
gmail.com> wrote:
  Zane H. Healy wrote:
  Wow, there is something I never knew.  There were
2.5" ESDI HD's?!?! I
 didn't even know there were any smaller than 5.25".  Come to think of it,
didn't the PS/2 Model 70 have a 3.5" ESDI? 
 That sounds familiar.  The PS/2 Model 30 (not 286) came with a 3.5"
 ESDI drive - with a full-width edge connector.
  The full width edge connector drive was the one on the Mod 70, wasn't
 it?  I thought the Mod 30-8086 came with only two floppy drives?  Wasn't
 the Mod 30 hard drive option a 3rd party jobbie? 
This was 100% Big Blue.  It was the only PC in a DEC shop, bought by
and for the accountants who needed to run DOS-based accounts
receivables and payroll apps.

I'm willing to accept that it's some bizzaro IDE or MCA bus-extension
drive (it does *not* have the usual ESDI cabling arrangement that I'm
used to), but I was told at the time I was looking for an upgrade path
that it was an ESDI drive - perhaps it's some flavor of IDE drive with
an embedded ESDI controller, not an embedded MFM controller.

-ethan