All things ESDI

[Marvin Johnston]

> The connectors on the ESDI drive appear to be the same as MFM so I am
> assuming that I can use MFM cables.

I have always used the same cables used for MFM on ESDI drives with no
problems.


> What little info I could find apart from geometry suggested that the
> only comtroller for these was an Adaptec ESDI Controller Card (possibly
> the ACB-2322D or ACB-2322

I don't believe that is true; any ESDI controller should work. A Core
ESDI controller was what I used on some of the Maxtor ESDI drives with
no problems. I do not know if changing the controller brand would
require another low-level format for the drive to work properly. The
controller cards (at least for the ones I used) have the formatting
routines built into the BIOS and I *think* they are accessed in the same
way as XT HD controller cards, i.e. debug g=C006 (?).


> I am also assuming that if I slot an ESDI controller into a motherboard
> that the motherboard will recognise it as a hard disk controller without
> doing much else.

I don't think that will work. ISTR that the instructions for the
controller just said to set the HD Type to 1.

While cleaning up here, I am looking for an ESDI HD that contains the
BBS run by Harvey Wheeler (co-author of the book FailSafe.) Harvey ran a
multiuser BBS called the Virtual Academy running PC Board that I would
like to find again. (He died last September and a friend of mine has
been getting stuff together that Harvey was involved with.) When I find
it, I may be able to comment more about how it is set up.