Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!uflorida!mephisto!prism!bb16
From: bb16@prism.gatech.EDU (Scott Bostater)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Input needed on XT Hard Disk
Message-ID: <5060@hydra.gatech.EDU>
Date: 19 Jan 90 13:39:19 GMT
References: <1400021@hp-ptp.HP.COM> <456@nrcvax.NRC.COM>
Reply-To: bb16@prism.gatech.EDU (Scott Bostater)
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology
Lines: 36

In article <456@nrcvax.NRC.COM> rick@nrcvax.UUCP (Rick Wagner) writes:
>In article <1400021@hp-ptp.HP.COM> pault@hp-ptp.HP.COM (Paul_Taira) writes:
>>
>>
      [ discussion about the need for a hard disk >30MB ]

>>             BTW, I have an Intel 386PC turbo card in the system to
>>      improve performance. 

>
>A few months back, I was doing development for the Segate St01/st02
>controller.  I had this card, and an st296N (80 Mb) drive installed in
>my XT clone.  It worked fine.  You'll need DOS 3.3 or 4.0.  DOS 3.2
>
     [discussion of disk partitioning deleted]

Better watch yourself on the SCSI drives with your 386PC card.  I tried putting
an ST296N/ST01 combination in an original IBM PC with a Quadram 386XT turbo 
board.  It didn't work because the SCSI cotroller board's BIOS conflicted with 
the 386XT's BIOS.  I talked with Quadram about the problem and their response
was "tough luck" (well, maybe not their exact words :-).  I don't know if the
Intel board has the same problem or not.

As far as the ST296N is concerned. I still have it (I ended up upgrading to a
25MHz 386 mother board) and I hate it. There's been a lot of talk about the 
ST296N a couple months ago in this group.  The major downfall of the drive is
that Seagate slowed it down to work better with Macs. This means you have to 
format the drive at a 2:1 interleave, severely crippling the speed of the drive.
(i.e. 1/2 max transfer rate).  Seagate will change the ROMs on the drive so you
can format at 1:1, but it takes two weeks and you don't get the same drive back.

-- 
Scott Bostater      GTRI/RAIL/RAD   (Ga. Tech)
"My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from Him"  -Ps 62.1
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