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Mid Atlantic MFM Full height
- Thread starter bobconan
- Start date
Covers: New York, Pensylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, Maryland and Washington DC.
VERAULT
Veteran Member
Does it have to function?
Pretty sure I have a 20MB MFM pulled working from an IBM 5160.
fdiskitup
Experienced Member
I hear these are pretty reliable.
VERAULT
Veteran Member
Sure at white noise generators... as storage devices? Not so muchI hear these are pretty reliable.
fdiskitup
Experienced Member
Get an xt-ide. +Top tip, If you want to keep the original sound of an mfm drive stick a playing card in the back of your psu fan.
Seriously though, these old drives had a design life of 5 to 10 years, 35 years on you may get lucky for a few more hours, but dont waste too much time on them. I’m currently comming to terms with the loss of my miniscribe 3425.
Heres the process:
Try format c: - oh no!
Try fdisk - oh no!
Try low level format - oh no!
Panic and try spinrite/speedstor/other controller cards/searching ebay.
Game over.
Get an xt-ide. Yay !
Attachments
VERAULT
Veteran Member
@fdiskitup i own a couple xtides. a bunch of mfm and rll.. bunch of scsi, Sas, Ide, i have dozens and dozens of drives... but when it comes to 80s drives... the point I?was making was they are all deteriorating. Tick tick tick.... boom
fdiskitup
Experienced Member
Yeah sorry, wasnt really targeting my comments at you, just a general synopsys of my experience over the last few restorations. Im conflicted because after you put in an xtide and a gotek and add a RTX3090 its not really an 80’s machine anymore.
put 3 drops of oil on the stepper motor then make a youtube video about it ?
Old hard drives, modern ones, or flash-based - they are all deteriorating. I have two MFM drives still in use and they don't show any issues, despite running since the late 80s. During the same time, lots of modern drives failed on me and also some CF and SD cards. Bottom line: whatever you use can fail the next day or last for decades to come. So it does not matter. If you want an MFM drive because of the sound and time-frame, get one.