Article View: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Article #41584Re: MFM as an RLL drive?
From: John Chapman
Date: Sun, 04 Feb 1990 06:36
Date: Sun, 04 Feb 1990 06:36
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2522 bytes
In article <MLM.90Jan21115353@hector.cs.brown.edu<, mlm@cs.brown.edu (Moises Lejter) writes: < In article <90011904272373@masnet.uucp< jf.messier@canremote.uucp (JF MESSIER) writes: < < < From: jf.messier@canremote.uucp (JF MESSIER) < < Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc < < Date: 15 Jan 90 07:45:00 GMT < < Organization: Canada Remote Systems Limited, Mississauga, ON, Canada < < < < << Is it possible to use a MFM hard disk drive with an RLL < < << controller? Are there particular MFM drives that will do it? < < << How would I tell? < < <The basic problem is that the coating on the disk is not designed to < < <handle the density of data used by the RLL format, and it WILL < < <'forget' what you have stored there. < < < < I had a really bad experience with such controllers. At Revenue < < Canada, we have a lot of Epson Equiti I+, each with a 30M hard disk < < (in fact, a 20M and a RLL controller). BUT, the drives used were < < Miniscribe, NOT APPROVED for RLL, so MFM-ONLY. We had problems, mainly < < new bad sectors appearing and destroying information. ... < < I recently bought a FlashCard-30 from CompuAdd, built from an RLL < controller and a MiniScribe 8438. The disk would format properly, but < a couple of days after being formatted it would start failing the < PC-TOOLS verify test (new bad sectors, and eventually hard seek < errors). I'll be calling CompuAdd this week, but my problem certainly < seems to be explained by the article above. Does anyone know if < in fact the MiniScribes are *NOT* reliable RLL drives, in general? In contrast to the previous posters' experiences I have been running two miniscribe 6850 70mb mfm drives with an rll controller 24hrs a day for 7 months now with no problems except that if I power the system down for some reason and let it get cold (~60F) I get errors when I reboot - I just let the machie run for ten minutes and then no more problems once it is warmed up)
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arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!usc!snorkelwacker!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!ubc-cs!fornax!chapmanReferences:
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!usc!snorkelwacker!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!ubc-cs!fornax!chapman From: chapman@fornax.UUCP (John Chapman) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: MFM as an RLL drive? Summary: mine works Message-ID: <272@fornax.UUCP> Date: 4 Feb 90 06:36:19 GMT References: <90011904272373@masnet.uucp< <MLM.90Jan21115353@hector.cs.brown.edu< Distribution: na Organization: School of Computing Science, SFU, Burnaby, B.C. Canada Lines: 38