Non-Standard Disks for 3B2/400

[Charlie Lear]

Sorry if this is part of a FAQ post, but here it is anyway!

I have a 3B2/400 with twin CDC-Wren 72MB MFM disks. One of the drives is
quite flakey and I've partitioned off about 15MB that contains a minefield
of bad sectors.

I have been very kindly offered a Seagate ST4096 to replace it. Obviously
it has a larger capacity and different geometry from the CDC. Therefore it
is not supported directly by the firmware.

Running SysV 3.2 and using a current idtools disk, would I be able to 
format it to 80MB or would I have to de-rate it to 925 cyls and call it
a CDC?

Please post; I'm interested in any experiences people have had in putting
non-ATT-listed disks in 3B2's. I saw a thread a month or so back about 
using a Maxtor XT1140 120MB disk, but didn't pay a lot of attention as the
New Zealand list price for an 1140 is NZD$5546 (USD$3383). For those bucks
I would rather write off the 3B2 and buy a 600MB disk and 16-port card
for my 386... nahh, I couldn't write off the 3B2. I'd rather keep it going
and reduce the 386/iX mob to inCoherent rage... 8-)

-- 
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Charlie "The Bear" Lear | clear at cavebbs.gen.nz | Kawasaki Z750GT  DoD#0221
The Cave MegaBBS  +64 4 643429  V32 | PO Box 2009, Wellington, New Zealand
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