🚀 go-pugleaf

jca@pnet01.cts.com (John C. Archambeau) writes:

> goat@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (Craig Stephen Campbell) writes:

> >What do you all know about IDE? What Experiences have you had? rumours you

> Why they're cheap, I don't know.  My experiences with IDE have been nothing
> but good.  These experiences range from installing a pair of Conner CP-3184's
> in a Novell server to dinking around with them on Unix 386 systems.

I can attest to satisfaction with CDC's contribution to COMPAQ's 40-meg
drive in the older 386/16's, MAXTOR's XLT-200A, Conner 3111 (? a 110meg,
maybe a 3184), and a MicroScience 7100-20.  The MicroSci is a little
'clickety' when the drive's being accessed, but appears to be fairly
solid (albeit a little on the 'fat' size when it comes to installing
in the COMPAQ).  No problems running under COMPAQ DOS 3.31 with ~32meg
paritions.

> >    Please please please somebody explain IDE drives... how do you low level
> >    format them, anyways? Disk manufacturers obviously can do it....

> You get a program that is aware of IDE drives.  Disk Manager 4.1 is aware of
> IDE drives.  But make sure that the program is specifically aware of IDE
> drives since it has to switch the drive into native mode and format it using
> its actual drive geometry.

In speaking with drive manufacturers (CONNER and MICROSCIENCE, in this
case), they advised against low-level formatting.  I used DiskMangler
(uh, DiskManager) to help confuse a COMPAQ's limited drive table into
believing it had a compatible drive.

All in all, I think IDE's are a good choice, but one should make sure
the copmuter's BIOS can handle it, or that you can beat it into sub-
mission.  Software wise--at least under MS-DOS--I haven't found
any compatibilities.

I highly recommend the MAXTOR XLT-200A, but this is deteriorating into
a 'religious' issue :-).