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From: dave@arnold.UUCP (Dave Arnold)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.att
Subject: 7300 hard drive controller
Message-ID: <117@arnold.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 20-Jun-87 13:57:28 EDT
Article-I.D.: arnold.117
Posted: Sat Jun 20 13:57:28 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 23-Jun-87 00:37:34 EDT
Organization: Mission Viejo, Ca
Lines: 28
Keywords: unixpc disk controller

I found a disk drive I am interested in for upgrading my 7300.
It is the Miniscribe 3053.  It's a half height drive with a rotary
voice coil.  It has 44.6 formatted capacity, has an access time of 25ms,
and is supposedly vvverrryy quiet :-) .  It has a list price of $625 (I think),
and I believe I can get it cheaper.  However, it has a ST412 interface.  Not
ST506 or ST506/412, but ST412 only.  I talked to an somebody at Miniscribe,
and @ first said it would be no problem interfacing.  Then he paused, and said
he wanted to talk to an engineer, and would call me back.  After calling me
back, he then wanted to know how old the machine is (he didn't know what a
UNIXpc was!).  Supposedly, ST506 came before ST412 and old controllers don't
support ST412.  ST506 doesn't do buffered seeks, ST412 does.

My questions are this:

Can the disk drive controller on the UNIXpc motherboard do ST412 buffered
seeks?

Is the differences between ST506 and ST412, which I stated, correct?

What exactly is a buffered seek?

In general, anybody know for sure if this drive will work as it should on
the UNIXpc?

Dave Arnold

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