UVAX II disk drive--HELP

[unllab at amber.berkeley.edu]

Please excuse if this is not the most appropriate newsgroup...

We have a regular microVAX II with the standard DEC st-506 controller.
Anyway i THOUGHT it was st-506.  I got hold recently of a Micropolis 1325
disk drive and thought i'd add it to our system, but the DEC physical formatter
barfed and wouldn't take the non-DEC drive.  To my eye, there is no difference
between the OEM Micropolis 1325 that came with the system, and the open market
version i tried to use.

Did DEC do something sneaky with the drives they ordered from Micropolis?
If so what, and can it be defeated easily?

Please e-mail responses, and i will summarize to the net if warranted.  It
seems an important problem as you can save $1-2K over what DEC wants for an
RD53.

Paul Leondis
unllab at amber.berkeley.edu
...!ucbvax!jade!amber!unllab