[rescue] Re: Drive Reliability (was SCSI drive for sale at buy.com)

[Jeffrey Nonken]

On Wed, 14 May 2003 19:19:05 -0400 (EDT), "Curtis H. Wilbar Jr."
<rescue at hawkmountain.net> wrote:

> Well, if you ever go to dispose of any high capcity (100MB or higher)
> MFM drives... don't toss em... just e-mail me... depending on what
> you have, I'll pay the shiping to save it.

I think my ESDI drive is 150 meg. The next larger, if I haven't tossed it,
would be a Seagate ST4096. After that you get down around 35 meg and lower.
I think the MR522 is about 20 meg. I'm pretty sure I've already tossed my
ST412; last time I used it, it was showing signs of age.

I may even still have one of the really old Tandon drives. It's an 11 meg
full-height 5.25" drive and doesn't even have buffered seek. The only PC
controller that I know you can use it on is one of the old Western Digital
8-bit XT controllers; you have to configure it to run without buffered
seek. (Though they should work with the TRS-80 project I'm planning to send
to Koyote.) My employer bought two of them. They cost $900 each. When I got
them, one had a bad controller board. I was astounded to find a box of them
at a hamfest not long after that; I impressed the guy by quoting exactly
what drive they were for. I bought two at $12 each. The first one fixed the
broken drive. I never used the second.

Ah, the good old days when they would use foam to try to keep the static
discharge springs from vibrating. They'd sell kits with a silicon grease /
graphite mix to lubricate the contact point. I used to flow the solder and
move the spring around to get it to wear at a different spot. And the
damned things would still squeal.

I don't think I've ever owned an MFM drive bigger than the ST4096, and that
was relatively recent. Mostly I made do with 20 meggers and smaller. I
remember crying the night I smoked two 35 meg drives and had to scramble to
put my BBS back online.

---
We can't all be heros, for someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go
by. -Will Rogers