Path: utzoo!utgpu!cunews!bnrgate!bwdls58!mlord
From: mlord@bwdls58.bnr.ca (Mark Lord)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: perstor drive controler
Message-ID: <4647@bwdls58.UUCP>
Date: 11 Oct 90 20:36:40 GMT
References: <931@dcsc.dla.mil>
Sender: mlord@bwdls58.UUCP
Reply-To: mlord@bwdls58.bnr.ca (Mark Lord)
Organization: Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada
Lines: 34

In article <931@dcsc.dla.mil> drezac@dcsc.dla.mil (Duane L. Rezac) writes:
>
>has anyone had any experience with the Perstor  ps180-16fn hard disk
>controler card? I am looking for any experience/comments on this product.

Yes.  I have one.  It works reliably for me.  No problems with any software,
except for low-level disk formatters.  Low level formatting can ONLY be done
with the supplied formatting software.

Also, this controller appears to have no track buffering, so most machines
(with 8Mhz AT bus, regardless of CPU speed) can only achieve 3:1 interleave.
If your machine runs the expansion bus faster, then 2:1 might be possible.

This is not as bad as it sounds, since more data is on every track, 
giving a tolerable data transfer rate of 317KB/sec instead of the usual
450KB or so for 1:1 MFM.  Thus, "effective interleave" is about 1.6:1 .

As for capacity increase, ignore the "90%" claim and simply calculate it:

	MFM = 17 sectors/track,  ADRT = 31 sectors/track.
	Capacity = (31 / 17) = 182% that of MFM = 82% increase.

I used it with a Seagate 251-1, but found that the Seagate had too many
bad sectors for my liking (14 from factory, about 10 more with Perstor).

It works fine with my Miniscribe 3650 (no bad sectors) and a Priam drive
I have (2 factory bad sectors).  Perstor claims it should not work with my
Priam drive, and they are partially correct:  it will not boot from that drive.
But then.. priam is weird anyway (even spinrite doesn't like them!).
-- 
 ___Mark S. Lord__________________________________________
| ..uunet!bnrgate!mlord%bmerh724 | Climb Free Or Die (NH) |
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