Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!orstcs!romana.cs.orst.edu!gatesl
From: gatesl@romana.cs.orst.edu (Lee Ryan Gates)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: 2ST-251-1 + 1:1RLL = Success!
Message-ID: <10687@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU>
Date: 18 May 89 08:52:26 GMT
Sender: usenet@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU
Reply-To: gatesl@romana.cs.orst.edu (Lee Ryan Gates)
Organization: Oregon State Univ. -- Computer Science
Lines: 25


  Well, in followup to the discussions about ARLL and RLLing ST-251's, i am 
posting what I decided on.  I figure the Perstor would probably not be worth
the extra 120$ (300 vs. 180) for the little bit of extra space, and having to
compromise the 1:1 interleave.  Today I got the DTC 1:1 RLL controller.  All
went well, transfer rate climbed to 659kb/s from the MFM 2:1's 239kb/s, it
formatted the 42.7mb to 65mb, and found the same if less errors in formatting.

  I am quite pleased with the outcome.  I got some responses from others on the
net before, all positive.  The only requirement one person noted (from a 
previous disscussion) is that the window margin on the spec sheet from Seagate
had to be < 60ns, mine was in the 30-40 range, so no problems.  The only 
negative information I found was in Computer Shopper in which a guy wrote in
that he had RLL'ed a Miniscribe 3650 (standard MFM drive), then 4 months later
had a software crash in which the drive lost all data.  I have gotten respose
from others who have done the same thing with 251's with success, so I am not
very worried (I will keep frequent backups however).

  Just thought I would inform you to my decision, and outcome.  Please let me
know if you have any comments or questions.

  lee
**
      'must be Oregon, look there's another person with rust on 'em.'
gates@romana.cs.orst.edu   'anybody got a job for an aspiring cs undergrad?' :-)