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

[Jeffrey Nonken]

On Wed, 14 May 2003 22:58:33 -0400, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com>
wrote:

>    If you still have an ST4096 and Curt isn't drooling over it, I'm
> definitely interested in it.
>
>    The ST412 would actually be a semi-decent historical preservation
> piece, though I'd probably opt for an ST-506.  The "MFM interface" is
> commonly referred to as the "ST-506 interface", although the actual
> ST-506 drive had some interface differences.  The ST-412 is actually
> the drive whose interface which the later crop of mainstream MFM drives
> was based on, so it would be more correctly called the "ST-412
> interface" which some people actually did call it.

Since I'm virtually certain that I've thrown both of these drives in the
trash, I'd say that it's safe to say they're history.
>
>    Calling it "MFM" is a bad idea, even though the term came into common
> use.  The fact that the data was recorded using Modified Frequency
> Modulation has precisely jack squat to do with [most of] the interface,
> and indeed some other types of [non-ST-412-interfaced] drives used MFM
> recording methods.

Perhaps, but that's what they were commonly called by the people I worked
with at the time they were popular.

In any case, you've piqued my curiosity. I seem to have a pair of the MR522
drives, a Rodime RO 204, a Tandon TM 603 SE and a spare controller board, a
Quantum Q540 marked "Non Repairable," a Tulin TL240, and a Seagate ST-238R
(which is the RLL version of the ST-225, or whatever that model number
was), and thus has a whopping capacity of 30 whole meg.

Some of them still have terminator resistors.

---
When you skin a man, you have to let him recuperate and grow more hide -- or
he gets nervous. -L. Long