Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!tekcrl!tekgvs!keithe
From: keithe@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Keith Ericson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Maxtor and Miniscribe drive query
Keywords: specs needed  1024 or 1224 on XT 2190
Message-ID: <6605@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM>
Date: 4 Jan 90 21:18:56 GMT
References: <1342@mitisft.Convergent.COM>
Reply-To: keithe@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Keith Ericson)
Distribution: na
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton,  OR.
Lines: 24

In article <1342@mitisft.Convergent.COM> burton@mitisft.Convergent.COM (Philip Burton) writes:
>I would like the net's help to get specs on these drives:

>Miniscribe 8438.  Is this an RLL or MFM drive?

>Maxtor 2190.  Is this 1024 or 1224 cyliners?

>Supposedly, a Maxtor 1140 is just a 2190 that has been tested to "only" 918
>cylinders.  Does anyone run an 1140 to 1024 (1224 ???) cylinders?


The Miniscribe 8438 is an RLL drive; 615 cyl, 4 head, write comp at cyl
128, 26 sec/tk. And it's slow: 68 ms avg access.

The Maxtor 1140 is indeed a 2190 as you described.  The way I determine
how many cylinders to push it to is to connect up a controller (OMTI,
usually, to get 1:1 interleave) and use a formatting program (WDFMT -
from Western Digital, usually) to format ONE head, and I tell the
program to format 1250 cylinders.  Then I watch as the formatting
program reports progress and observe the cylinder-count number when I
hear the characteristic "BREEeoonnnk" as the heads reset from the
highest numbered cylinder to track 0.

kEITHe