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From: nyount@secola.Columbia.NCR.COM (Nelson Yount)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: IDE/MFM drive and controller coexistence
Message-ID: <603@secola.Columbia.NCR.COM>
Date: 18 Sep 90 12:27:19 GMT
Organization: NCR Comten Columbia
Lines: 29


Does anyone out there know if it is possible to install an IDE drive and
controller and an MFM drive and controller in the same system?

My situation is this:  My 286 system came with a WD 40MB IDE drive.  I recently
obtained a used 32MB MFM drive that I would like to add, and borrowed an MFM
controller to see if I could get it to work.  By strapping the MFM controller
as the secondary hard drive controller, and by trial-and-error strapping of the
IDE controller, I finally got the two controllers to coexist without causing a
boot failure.  But when I add the new drive 1 through setup, I get a drive 1
failure at boot time, as if the system is looking for drive 1 through the IDE
controller and doesn't find it.  I know that the new drive and controller both
work because I tried them alone in the system without the IDE drive.  By the
way, I have an AMI BIOS and am running MS-DOS 3.3.

Is there something else I need to do to specify that drive 1 is to be accessed
through the MFM controller, or is this configuration just impossible?

A second question: The MFM drive has 8 heads and 512 cylinders.  The closest
drive type to this is type 7, with 8 heads and 462 cylinders.  I've heard that
type 47 could be used to specify a user-defined drive type, allowing you to
directly specify the number of heads and cylinders.  But setup just takes 47
and I'm never asked to provide this information.  Is there really a user
defined drive type, and how is it used?


Nelson Yount	nyount@secola.Columbia.NCR.COM
NCR Corp.
NPD-Columbia