MAXTOR XT4170 with WD1007 Controller (& SpeedStore)

[Karl Denninger]

In article <10373 at rls.UUCP> randy at rls.UUCP (Randall L. Smith) writes:
(formatting instructions)...

>debug
>- G=C800:5

Unless you're set up for a secondary ROM entry (which is REAL important if
you have a VGA card), in which case it's CC00:5.

>Anyway, just take the default conflaguration which will appear strange
>and totally wrong.  As I recall, there are three choices.  One is for
>17 sectors/track (spt), 34 spt and 63 spt.  The head count will be many
>times more than true and the spt and cylinders way off.  Thats good. 

You can only do this after physically formatting the drive.

>Somehow by multiplying them together you get the actual surface area
>equivalence for the drive.  For a drive with more than 1024 cylinders
>(as is XT4170E) use the selection with 63 sectors/track. 

NO!  Doing that makes the system quite a bit slower than if you leave it at
the real physical parameters!   You see, the controller has to remapping if
you set things up like that.  

The WD1007-SE2 can also set up for 36 sectors and still run 1:1 interleave,
while the WD1007-WA2 can only do 35 sectors if you want 1:1, not to mention
that the SE2 board will also run 15Mhz (760MB) drives at full rated speed.

>The real bummer is you have to *manually* enter all the defect list.
>Grrrr.  WD says they will fix this eventually.  It's really unthinkable
>they didn't provide that from day one.  Oh well.

The SE2 doesn't do this; it reads the defect list from the drive and ALSO
allows you to enter manual defects as well.

As an aside, the ACB2322-16 (Adaptec) board was just received here.  It also
runs 15Mhz drives.  Outside of a couple of strange messages during
formatting (which I cannot explain) it seems to work just about as well as
the WD1007 series.  We're still going to stick with the WD1007, as it gives
the same performance, doesn't print strange messages that I don't have
explanations for, and is a little cheaper to boot.

Nonetheless, the ACB is a nice controller too, and should work equally well.
Make sure you get the 2322-16; the 2322-8 isn't as fast and doesn't have as
much read-ahead buffering onboard.

--
Karl Denninger (karl at ddsw1.MCS.COM, <well-connected>!ddsw1!karl)
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