All things ESDI - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

4 May 2005

...
  I did some Googling on these drives last night and I
found 
 plenty about geometry but little else. It seems ESDI fitted 
 somewhere between MFM/RLL and IDE all be it a very brief 
 appearance but certainly the rationale for introducing the 
 ESDI drives at the time was impressive for those times. 
They came along just before SCSI and SCSI displaced them in the market.
They were excellent performers in their day.

...
  The connectors on the ESDI drive appear to be the same
as MFM 
 so I am assuming that I can use MFM cables. 
I always did, but cannot assure you it would be correct.

...
  My only 
 concern is that I could not ascertain if these types of 
 drives require the heads to be parked before spinning down so 
 I'm reluctant to do this at this stage. 
They are "new" enough they should auto-park.

...
  clear. I am also assuming that if I slot an ESDI
controller 
 into a motherboard that the motherboard will recognise it as 
 a hard disk controller without doing much else. 
The PC type Adaptecs had a configurable BIOS overlay like the later SCSI
cards and would appear as a "standard" drive. Adaptec also made some
controllers that were intended for native support by OS's and hardware
designed for ESDI, such as the 3Com 3+Open servers (I used to support a
bunch of the 3Com servers).