Western Digital WD1002A-27X RLL controller jumpers

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#18681

From: Paul Coen
Date: Thu, 27 Jun 1991 23:18

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I have a rather boring WD1002A-27X hard drive controller card (8-bit, 
supports 2 RLL drives, you know the card).

It has those dopey jumpers that set the translation of drive 
characteristics to DOS on and off.  The literature that came with the 
controller is skimpy on information, but jumper 1 seems to control hard 
drive 1, and jumper 2 controls translation on the second drive.

I have two questions:

1)  Why did WD bother?  Just what is the point of effectivly lying to the 
    operating system about drive characteristics in this case? 

2)  Are my observations correct, in that if I set the card to NO 
    translation, the ST238R 30-meg drive that is currently installed will
    continue to work properly?  It SEEMS okay.

I'm sure that this feature had a purpose at some point in time, but I'm 
having a little bit of trouble figuring out what it could be.
				---------
      Paul Coen --  pcoen@drunivac.drew.edu, pcoen@idsvax.ids.com
Disclaimer:  I have no employer to not speak for, so this is my opinion.

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From: paulcn@idsvax.ids.com (Paul Coen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Western Digital WD1002A-27X RLL controller jumpers
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Date: 27 Jun 91 23:18:46 GMT
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