=== Miniscribe disk drive infos ===

[Tom Peters]

Oh my heavens, I don't think I am any sort of expert, but will try to help.

Do you have a document for the controller card? If not, I will try to find 
my copy.

Yes, most RLL drives can be formatted to lower capacity and used on a MFM 
controller, but some aren't reliable when used that way. I don't know which 
are.

What happens when you start the formatter in debug? Does it attempt the 
format and light up the drive or fail immediately?

Do you have any other old PC or XT machines you can try this in? 1701 is a 
generic hard disk failure code, but it could imply that the bios is set 
incorrectly and just doesn't recognize the drive. Shouldn't stop you from 
formatting it, but then again, perhaps you don't need to, maybe you need to 
fix something else that is wrong. A cabling issue perhaps.

The reason I ask about another PC is that I seem to recall the PS2 needing 
a diskette to configure it, whereas an XT or clone wouldn't.

-T

At 01:45 PM 12/21/2005 +0100, you wrote:
>Good morning Tom,
>
>I've just read a topic on the cctalk mailing list in which you seem to be 
>en expert in old MFM/RLL disk drives.
>
>I get many troubles in trying to place a WD disk controller with a 
>miniscribe 8438 disc. As many people do, I always get the famous 20 or 
>1701 errors whan trying to low level format with the debug command, under 
>MS dos (G=C800:5)
>
>
>I think i've been trying all that could be possible : removing jumpers, 
>changing the WD driver card ... it never works. I've put another 
>combination of MFM disk drive plus WD controller, and I obtained good 
>results, so, it's not a problem with the computer, but certainly a problem 
>of disk and/or controller.
>
>
>My controller is a WD1002A-WX1. I know it's for MFM disk, and I also know 
>that the 8438 disc is a RLL, but it's said that it can also be formatted 
>to 20Mbytes on a single WD MFM controller.
>
>The machine is IBM PS2 model 30. The 8438 is used to replace the old 
>WDL-320 disk drive that doesn't work (it also sends the 1701 error code, 
>butI don't know how to low-level format it..
>
>
>
>Many thanks if you can give me your help.
>
>I apologize for disturbing you.
>
>
>--...  ...--   -.. .   ..-.  .....  ..  -.  .-..
>
>Frederic BOSSU, F5INL
>


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