advice/help needed with 6300+

[Bill Kennedy]

In article <333 at marvin.moncam.co.uk> emmo at moncam.co.uk (Dave Emmerson) writes:
>In article <1989Dec26.220943.14476 at cs.rochester.edu>, ken at cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap) writes:
>> [deleted symptoms]
>> The disk a half-height 5.25" unit marked Olivetti XM5220/2 and holds 20
>> Mb. There are two cables, one 34 connector, one 20 (?) connector to the
>> disk controller.
[ some more deleted ... ]
>
>Sounds right.
>It's probably a rebranded drive, perhaps a NEC, but you should be able to
>swap in most popular ESDI type drives without needing a new controller.
                      ^^^^  I hope Dave meant ST-506 MFM drives, I'm not
aware of an ESDI controller or drive that will work in a 6300 or 6300 PLUS.
That series of machines preceded the IBM PC-AT and doesn't use the same bus
layout so XT bus cards must be used.  Perhaps there is an XT bus ESDI card,
but the one that Ken is referring to is ST-506 MFM (I'm quite sure of that).
In any event, she'll need a new controller for an ESDI drive, most any old
MFM drive should work with the controller she has.  There are only eight
drives that work reliably with Simul-Task on the PLUS, but I've not heard
of any drive problems with DOS using the BIOS on the controller card.

[ ... ]
>
>Spec-for-spec, hard cards should cost a bit more, you're buying the controller
>too. I think they're a few db noisier too, not to mention needing one or
>two slots, and you need another complete hardcard to add another drive...
>On the other hand, they ARE easy to install.

The slots in the PLUS' backplane are farther apart than on an XT or AT, so
the additional space shouldn't be a problem.  Dave's right about the
expense, but it's an alternative.  Another alternative is

ACT Magnetic Technology, Inc.
4 Wrigley
Irvine, CA  92718  714-770-6575  800-251-2849  800-992-2849 (CA)

I have not used them recently, but they have a flat rate to refurb hard
and floppy disk drives.  The flat rate includes heads and platters if
need be (and isn't any less if not needed).  If I recall correctly, they
rebuilt 20Mb half height drives for about $125, turned them around in
five days and had a 120 day warranty (I had to use it once).  They are
professional and reliable, worth the time to call.

[ clock battery stuff ... ]
-- 
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