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From: gopstein@soleil.UUCP (Rich Gopstein)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: st251-1, hdtst125, spintest, etc.
Keywords: spintest interleave 251-1 hdtst125
Message-ID: <649@soleil.UUCP>
Date: 1 Apr 89 16:38:09 GMT
Organization: Harris Semiconductor, Somerville, NJ
Lines: 33


I am in the process of installing a st251-1 in my ATT 6300.  To determine
the optimum interleave, I formatted the disk several times with INCREASING
interleaves, and kept running spintest until the number of revolution
necessary to read a track dropped off dramatically (from > 20, down to 5).
The interleave turned out to be 5:1 with my WDXT-GEN controller.


When I ran the HDTST125 tool, it told be that my current interleave was
6:1 (incorrect), but the optimal interleave was 5:1 (correct).  I ran it
at several different interleaves, and it was consistently off by one in
reporting what the actual interleave was set to.  The disk performance
check, however, reported track read times that were consistent with the
actual interleave.

The HDTST125 package reported that the (average?) seek time on the drive was
about 40ms.  This does not sound right...   Has anyone else run it on their
251-1?  I would expect something closer to 28ms, since it reported about
60ms access times for my st225 (which is close to what seagate claims).

I am also interested in getting better than 5:1 interleaves on my system.
Does anyone know of an XT-type controller that supports the 251-1 and
might provide for a better interleave?  Scott Mueller in his "Upgrading
and Repairing PCs" (an excellant book BTW), recommends the OMTI 5520 controller
which will run in a stock XT at 2:1, and 1:1 in fast XT clones.  Unfortunately,
SMS (who made the OMTI) just went out of business...

Rich Gopstein
..!rutgers!soleil!gopstein
-- 
Rich Gopstein

..!rutgers!soleil!gopstein