ps2/80 disk upgrade

[Ronald Florence]

Some weeks ago I posted an article requesting suggestions or
recommendations of a reliable, fast hard disk as a substitute for or
addition to the 70 Meg disk in my ps2/80.  I received a number of
useful suggestions:

Mark Davis (davis at cs.unc.edu) described his experiences installing a
Micropolis 1355 drive in a ps2/60, which has the same ESDI controller
as the ps2/80.  Mark was ambitious enough to make his own cables (from
JDL and Radio Shack parts), and passed along the valuable suggestion
of using the Disk Manager (ps/2) program to low-level format a non-IBM
ESDI disk so it can be recognized by the ps2 controller.

Tom Friedel (tpf at ms.uky.edu) offered to sell his CMS 120 Meg drive,
which is designed for the ps2/50 and 70.  Nick Pemberton (nick at aimed)
suggested Priam disks, although his own experience was with an Intel
machine.  Vince Guarna (guarna at uicsrd.csrd,uiuc.edu) was also
searching for a ps2/80 upgrade, and recommended Priam or CMS drives.
Jim Mott (jim at homectl) wanted to hear whatever responses I got (and
snuck in a boost for AIX).

What did I do?  I bought a 182 Megabyte CDC ESDI disk, rated at 16.5
ms.  The vendor supplied a $30 CDC version of the Disk Manager
program.  The CDC disk is configured with 769 cylinders, 9 heads, 34
sectors.  Disk Manager maps the disk to a configuration of 151
cylinders, 64 heads, 32 sectors, and the ps2 controller accepts that
configuration.

Re-installing Xenix (2.2.3) was a snap, once I used the dkinit program
to change the hard disk parameters from the default disk configuration
(which Xenix recognized) to the remapped parameters.  (I actually
installed the system with the original disk parameters, then
discovered that the the ps2 wouldn't boot from the hard disk.)  The
Disk Manager program also remaps the bad tracks to their equivalents
in the ps2 configuration.

I have not run any benchmark tests, but the disk seems much quicker
than the original equipment disk.  My thanks to everyone who offered
advice and suggestions.
-- 

Ronald Florence			...{hsi!aati,rayssd}!mlfarm!ron