Replacements for ST-406/ST-512 drives

[Tony Duell]

>    You are correct about some HP-IB drives not being able to format their
> own disks. I've had mixed results with the HP drives. I wonder if you could
> mount the bare HP-IB disk drive (before it fails) and a regular ST-225 in a
> PC and use Ghost or some other software to duplicate it?

This would depend on the PC controller being able to handle the low-level 
format of the HP controller, which is by no means certain!. 

I've never heard of 'Ghost'. Can it even handle drives with non-standard 
numbers of sectors per track?

Incidentally, I do know that the HP drive boxes are very fussy about the 
drives they'll support. During the self-test they try to select heads 
beyond the number of heads that should exist, and give an error if the 
drive doesn't complain.

There is a set of 4 links called the 'Ident Sea' on the controller board 
in my 9133 that seem to select one of 16 possibel drive geometries. I 
have no idea what they are, though.

-tony