Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!oliveb!mintaka!mit-eddie!bu-cs!ngeow
From: ngeow@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Yee Ngeow)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Drive cards
Message-ID: <43369@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: 27 Nov 89 03:44:38 GMT
References: <1989Nov21.230217.4669@contact.uucp>
Reply-To: ngeow@cs.bu.edu (Yee Ngeow)
Followup-To: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Organization: Boston University
Lines: 39

In article <1989Nov21.230217.4669@contact.uucp> rasmus@contact.UUCP (Rasmus Lerdorf) writes:
>I have the following equipment:
>1 generic XT clone with a NEC V20 chip
>1 ST238 drive
>1 WD1002A-27X controller card
>1 Plenty Perl card.
>1 360K 5.25 floppy drive
>
[STUFF DELETED]
>
>Part 2.  I know the WD1002A-27X controller will support a second hard drive.
>Will I have any problems hooking up an old ST412 to the controller in addition
>to the ST238 that I already have on it?  It is just a question of getting a
>ribbon cable that jumps from the ST238 to the ST412 and then hooking up that
>smaller cable to the card?  (Yeah, I am getting really technical with my terms
>here.. ;)  Need I worry about my 180W power supply driving these additional
>drives?

******WARNING*******

DO NOT HOOK UP A ST412 TO A RLL CONTROLLER. Period. I used to :-( have a 
ST412 drive hanging around, and just for the hack of it, I hooked it up
to a WD1002-27X (almost like the one you have) and it happily formatted 
to 15+ MBytes. Gee, I say to myself, it worked! So I copied some software
onto it, and ran bunch of benchmarks. Looks pretty good to me...until
suddently it started making REAL LOUD NOISE and SMELL OF BURNED PLASTIC
hit my nose. I quickly shut it down, and take it out of the machine. The
logic board is totally fried. Apparently the ST412 drive I have does not
like the 50% higher clock rate of an RLL drive and overheated. Luckly
it did not explode and cause fire :-)

There *may* be some ST412s out there running RLL controllers happily. But
I will NEVER put one of thoese on RLL again. For that matter, I will not
put any MFM hard disk pre-1985 era onto a RLL controller. It is just too
risky.

>-- 
>Rasmus Lerdorf {lsuc,utzoo,mnetor}!dciem!nttor!rasmus | I'd rather be in Denmark
>Northern Telecom, Toronto, Canada. (416)597-2090x2505 | SD Eng Waterloo '93