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Trying setup MFM / RLL harddisks.

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Robin4

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Sep 25, 2011
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Hello,

I want to configure an WD1004-27x RLL controller combined with an Seagate ST-277R -1 drive..
I know how to come in the Formatter utility..

Iam already in the Super bios II Formatter Rev 1.0 utility on the controller card.

On the second question its asks the interleave number.. Can someone explain me where i can find this number, or where to look at?
That controller card is previously used with an other RLL harddisk.. So i need to set it for this harddisk..

So how to set it?
 
Interleave is when the controller "shuffles" the physical location of the sectors to increase effectivity.

Without interleave, sectors are arranged as 1-2-3-4... This means that after you read a sector, the next sector might just have passed when you want to read it. Then the controller will just sit there and wait an entire turn of the disk before the sector can be read. That wastes a lot of time.

With interleave, sectors might be arranged as 1-30-2-31-3-32-4-33... There will always be other sectors inbetween sequencial sectors, so the controller might be able to read two or more sectors without having to wait a lot!

What interleave works best depends from controller to controller and drive to drive, but typical values for a MFM harddisk is around 3.
 
here is a thread with some interleave information.
what you may find handy are the attached files in the the thread to benchmark your interleave.
my drive and controller arrived formatted with and interleave of 3, but I (like many other people) found that an interleave of 2 was a better performer on my gear.
you best test your combination of controller and disk. It's pretty easy.
 
There are utilities out there to determine the optimum interleave for a drive-controller combination. Later 16-bit MFM caching controllers are perfectly happy with a 1:1 interleave, for example.
 
Currently the controller was already set to interleave 4.> so i guess its better for now to leave that setting how it was..
Later i always can reconfigure the drive and formatting it again.. I just really like to know if the drive that comes separately from the controller just will work with hassle.



What i also dont understand is the first question in the formatter program.. It asks Current Drive is C: Select new drive or return for current.. ( i never can see where i can change that setting.) Only option i have is Return (enter) to accept the current setting.
( i guess that this option would only available with 2 daisy chained harddisk drives?)
 
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Thanks for the first manual.. The second one i had it beforehand.

For the harddisk i was using this:
ftp://ftp.seagate.com/pub/techsuppt/rll/st277r.txt

I think i will trying later, because i have more concerns now to get the floppy drives working right. I also dont know if my lately installed Expended memory chips on my v-tech laser 8086 XT/3 are trustfull (if these chips where bad or not)
On boot its says all the ram windows are ok. But if iam test it with a program called `checkit v3.00` then the test will give me some how 80 errors i didnt expect.


I have also bought a nice lot of these 5.25 floppy disks from someone who lives in the same country months ago. Only these floppy are on the edge of death now.. So i really want to save what i can save now.. (but dont trust the floppy system on my XT system)

The problem on the floppy drives.. I have a problem on formatting both A: 1.44MB and B: 360KB drives.. It would give me errors.. (maybe trying a different controller later) I have some much to do with these two hands and one brain..
 
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