Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!masnet!canremote!jf.messier
From: jf.messier@canremote.uucp (JF MESSIER)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: MFM as an RLL drive?
Message-ID: <90011904272373@masnet.uucp>
Date: 15 Jan 90 07:45:00 GMT
Organization: Canada Remote Systems Limited, Mississauga, ON, Canada
Lines: 25

>>       Is it possible to use a MFM hard disk drive with an RLL
>>       controller? Are there particular MFM drives that will do it?
>>       How would I tell?
>The basic problem is that the coating on the disk is not designed to
>handle the density of data used by the RLL format, and it WILL
>'forget' what you have stored there.

    I had a really bad experience with such controllers. At Revenue 
Canada, we have a lot of Epson Equiti I+, each with a 30M hard disk 
(in fact, a 20M and a RLL controller). BUT, the drives used were 
Miniscribe, NOT APPROVED for RLL, so MFM-ONLY. We had problems, mainly 
new bad sectors appearing and destroying information. When Epson came, 
then ADMITTED installing NON-RLL-APPROVED hard disk with RLL controllers
in their computer. One of the technician told me that this was to save 
money to Epson. When Epson came to change the HD, they brought ST-236, 
hich are RLL-approved, but they had to try 16 of these to fid 5 that 
worked in the computers. They had to come 4 times and they wasted a lot 
of time in testing those drives. Even after all drives were installed, 
we had other bad sectors appearing on the disks....


          STAY AWAY FROM RLL, PLEASE......... !!!!
---
 * Via ProDoor 3.0 
 * QNet 1.04a1: SuperByte '386