Date   : Sun, 03 Apr 1988 18:32:19 GMT
From   : rochester!ur-tut!cwwj@cu-arpa.cs.cornell.edu (Clarence Wilkerson)
Subject: 8" Hard disk for H89 H67 system

 I noticed that in the last of isssue of Computer Shopper there
were several ads for 8" hard disk that should be suitable for
replacing the one in the H67 unit. One ad had a Quantum 2010
for $69. Other prices went up to $300 for a thirty meg model.
With minimal reconfiguration, the H67 hardware and software
should handle the larger capacity drives also. Or as I mentioned
in my original response, one can use the internal sasi bus
adapter to talk to a DTC510 or XEBEC 1420 and anybody's 5"
st506 drive. These sasi controllers are available for less
than a hundred dollars, and there's a lot of 5" winchesters
around in the 5-40 megabyte range for $100-400. 
   If you're running CP/M, one small hassle is that the absolute
sector number is treated by the bios as a 16 bit unsigned
integer, whereas the controller uses a somewhat longer bit
pattern to address the drive. What this means is that to get
larger drives to work, you need to change the sector size
to 1024 bytes/sector so that you can still get to it all
with the bios. This is done by a jumper on the controller
board.
   I have a setup on my H89 that I've been running for about
4 years, using the internal H67 card and a DTC510 sasi
controller, with a variety of external drives. I never had
the 8" drives, so I had to write my own formatting and partitioning
software. If anyone still cares about this sort stuff, I'll
answer whatever questions you might have. Clarence Wilkerson