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From: cmv@looney.UUCP
Newsgroups: unix-pc.general
Subject: Miniscribe Drives for the unix-pc
Message-ID: <1100025@looney>
Date: Tue, 24-Nov-87 15:29:00 EST
Article-I.D.: looney.1100025
Posted: Tue Nov 24 15:29:00 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 29-Nov-87 19:58:30 EST
Lines: 37
Nf-ID: #N:looney:1100025:000:1653
Nf-From: looney!cmv    Nov 24 14:29:00 1987


I just got a bunch of spec sheets from Miniscribe that talk about
their line of ST-412/506 5 1/4" Winchester Hard disk drives (there's a good
trivia question, why is it called the ST412/506 standard?? I've no idea!)
and thought some folks would be interested in the results, so here they are!

Miniscribe

Model	Height	Size (fmtted)	Ave Seek	Heads:		Recording
		formatted	time		Cylinders	Method
=========================================================================
3212+	Half	12.75MBytes	53msec		2:615		MFM
3425+	Half	21.40MBytes	53msec		4:615		MFM
3438+	Half	32.70MBytes	53msec		4:615		2,7RLL
3650	Half	42.25MBytes	61msec		6:809		MFM
6032	Full	26.70MBytes	28msec		3:1024		MFM
6053	Full	44.60MBytes	28msec		5:1024		MFM
6079	Full	68.80MBytes	28msec		5:1024		2,7RLL
6085	Full	71.30Mbytes	28msec		8:1024		MFM
6128	Full	110.1Mbytes	28msec		8:1024		2,7RLL

Now, a few questions to any guru's out there in general. As I understand
things (which isn't saying much) the Modified Frequency Modulated (MFM)
encoding that is used for recording the information on the disk, is being
replaced by the 2,7 Run Length Limited (RLL) coding to boost the capacity
of the hard disk (I got this information from EDN magazine p57 September 3,
1987). My question is what does this mean to us unix-pc folks? Can I go out
and buy a Miniscribe 3438+ and simply install it in my stock 7300 and it will
work? If not, can I get it to work by simply exchanging the WD1010 chip with
a WD2010 chip, or is there more to it than that? I really don't understand
the impact of this 2,7RLL enough to know what to do, any help is much
appreciated.

Craig Votava
[ihnp4!]looney!cmv

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