Wren III-182 question

[James Van Artsdalen]

I recently purchased a CDC Wren III-183 hard disk from a Compaq owner.  I
intend to use it in my PC's Ltd. 386/16.  After a great deal of trouble, I
noticed that my OMTI-8620 hard disk controller thought that this drive, which
has 969 cylinders and 9 heads, only has 967 cylinders and 8 heads.  Further
investigation shows that indeed, the nineth head does not respond.  I checked
the CDC documentation, and the drive does have a nineth head.

A friend at PC's Ltd said he had heard that Compaq "brain damaged" the drive
for some unknown reason: he thought it might have something to do with Novell.
I don't want Novell: I do want the missing 16meg of disk space.  Compounding
the problem is that fact that the PC's Ltd has a drive type entry for a normal
Wren III-182, but not the Compaq damaged model.

Does anybody know how to repair the Wren III-182?  CDC would not talk to me
when I called for anyone technical, and I don't want to send it to them for
servicing (they might refuse to fix it, and might refuse to admit it's broken
if Compaq wants to keep things hush-hush).
-- 
James R. Van Artsdalen    ...!uunet!utastro!bigtex!james     "Live Free or Die"
Home: 512-346-2444 Work: 328-0282; 110 Wild Basin Rd. Ste #230, Austin TX 78746