RLL Hard Drive troubles

[generic486]

Any RLL-rated hard drive can be used with an MFM controller. Sometimes an MFM-rated drive can be successfully used with an RLL controller--results differ from one drive manufacturer to another.

But can they be formatted as RLL?

Also I tried one of my other drives a Cogito CG-906 and it gave a lot less defects. And it has a really odd sounding drive noise but it is normal.

 

[generic486]

Tried it in FDISK. Just gave me error reading disk. However every cylinder in the drive seemed to be bad. Don't know why but maybe the heads are bad on the drive.

 

[Chuck(G)]

But can they be formatted as RLL?

That's what I meant. When you're in the MFM/RLL area, changing controllers usually means a LLF--WD's MFM controllers aren't compatible with DTC's, and so on. Sometimes WD's MFM or RLL controllers aren't compatible with other WD MFM or RLL controllers.

An MFM or RLL drive is a very stupid device. You have a cable that instructs the small microcontroller on board where to move the heads and which head to use. The other cable is a dumb data channel--you can squirt anything down it pretty much (Do you want an FM hard drive? You can easily do it with the right hardware). Think "oversized floppy drive".

 

[generic486]

I'm done. I already listed the controller on ebay.

 

[RBARDY]

i'm a noob at this. So tell me dear sir, how do i configure the setting for the drive then? Oh and the rll drive seems to clash with ide. It just keeps telling me to wait.

my hard drive bible shows the wd 1002a-wx1 as 8 bit mfm default jumpers w3, w4 2&3 w6 2&3 w8 2&3 s1-8 [at mode] the wd 1002a-27x as 8bit rll defaults w3, w4 2&3 w6 2&3 w8 2&3 s1-5 s1-6 w9 format for both g=c800:5 you can get a rll controller and drive to co-exist with a ide but the rll must have a bios the system sees with the drive type acknowledeg in the rll bios i have done it with at's but not a xt