🚀 go-pugleaf

bruce@ais.com (Bruce C. Wright) writes:
>lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner) writes:
>> bruce@ais.com (Bruce C. Wright) writes:
>>>You can use most drives with an ST506 interface on the Rainbow.  So you
>>>can use an ST-225 as a 5 or 10MB drive, though I'd rather use it as a
>>>20MB drive :-).  The Rainbow does support that, although you do have to
>>>get one of the PD disk formatting programs for it like WUTIL (the standard
>>>DEC disk formatting program didn't support anything but DEC drives, and
>>>the ST-225 doesn't have the same geometry as any DEC drive).
>> 
>> Wrong; the ST-225 *is* the RD-31.  It is standard on DECmate III+ and often
>> found in DM II.
>
>I do not believe that the Rainbow ever officially supported that drive;
>certainly the standard DEC hard disk drive formmater did not know about
>it.  I didn't necessarily mean that the drive wasn't used in _some_ DEC
>machines, but it wasn't supported on the Rainbow and the Rainbow software
>knew _nothing_ about it.  You need third-party software in order to use it.
>I think the point was that by the time the ST-225 was out, DEC had already
>effectively given up on the Rainbow.

Charles is right.  The DEC formatting software can indeed format an
ST225 (whatever approx. 20M capacity drive they offer works, probably
the RD-31).  Anyway, I know because I did it long before I ever got my
hands on Wutil, though that would certainly work too.  As to whether an
RD-31 is actually a DEC relabelled St225, probably, but who knows!
I remember hearing that DEC wanted an astronomical price for their
relabelled drives, but that is another story.  And besides that, my
second hand ST225 didn't live long  :-(
--
	Tom Trebisky	ttrebisky@as.arizona.edu
...."There's no sense in being precise when you don't even
.... know what you're talking about." 
                       - John von Neumann