WD ESDI cont'lers. Was (Re: Xenix compatibility with ESDI controllers.)

[Tom Betz]

|From article <18383 at conexch.UUCP>, by root at conexch.UUCP (Larry Dighera):
|> In article <368 at merk.UUCP> brennan at merk.UUCP (Rich Brennan) writes:
|>>
|>>I am going to get some more disk storage, but instead of buying an
|>>additional disk of the same type I currently have, I'd like to get an
|>>ESDI disk. I'm running 386 Xenix 2.2.1, and it would be nice to not
|>>have to upgrade to their ESDI version, which (according to their docs)
|>>only handles 1024 cylinders.
|[deleted]
|> You're right about the WD1007's translation capability; It can make an
|> ESDI drive look like a 17-sectored ST506.
|> 
|> The WD1007A-WAH and WD1007A-WA2 are 16-bit ESDI Hard and Hard/Floppy 
|> controllers respectively.  They support 1:1 interleave and come with
|> BIOS extension ROM. The WD1007A-WAH has a retail price of $320 and the
|> WD1007A-WA2 retails for $350.  I can get them for $249 and $279.
|> 

I ran into one problem with my new Wyse 3216-150T that folks should look out
for.  It comes equipped with the WD 1007 driving a CDC 150 Mb (actually 144
Mb, but why split hairs?) HD and a Wangtech 60 Mb tape drive.  We tried to
initialize the HD on three different machines using Wyse's SETUP software
supplied with the system (version 1.08, for them as cares) and each time we
tried, the system would hang at a different place in the process.  Now, one
bad HD I can accept, two I can almost accept, but >three< in a row?  Uh-uh.
After three weeks' frustration and a lot of digging by myself and the vendor's
technician, we finally determined that Wyse had installed in quite a few of 
their machines 1007's which were incompatible with the Wangtech card, and all
three of the machines I had received had that old version of the card in them!

According to the Wyse tech who told us this, WD had changed the card at Wyse's 
request, but Wyse shipped quite a bunch of 3216s with the incompatible card.

We were able to initialize the HD by removing the Wangtech card.  The Wyse tech
said that once the drive was initialized,one may reinstall the tape drive 
controller card, and there should be no further problems, and as of yet there 
have been none (though I'm having problems installing the WY-995 drivers and 
getting the system to boot the new kernel, I'm not yet ready to blame that on 
the WD 1007...) but I'm planning to update the 1007 just as soon as our 
vendor gets in a replacement, and I don't plan to do any critical work 
(in fact I may even re-initialize the HD and reinstall Xenix) on this machine 
until the 1007 is replaced.

Just a word of warning for others.  According to the Wyse rep, 1007's likely
to have this problem can be identified by the fact that the main controller
chip (sorry, I don't have the number handy) is socketed instead of being
soldered to the board.  A call to WD may be in order if you are suspicious. 
I understand they are very helpful folks there.