Date   : Tue, 07 Mar 2006 20:23:55 +0000
From   : Phil Blundell <philb@...>
Subject: Re: Warning: Sad case on list!

On Mon, 2006-03-06 at 22:38 +0000, Fragula wrote:
> Also someplace I have a list of mid 90s drives that have resizable
> sectors, and a couple of resizable Micropolis 5.25" drives. These are a
> LOT quieter than the standard Acron ST-225, but I doubt as reliable (I
> have four ST-225s, all working, and two were running 24/7 for four years
> on a BBS. "Old ST-225's dont die, they just get noisier!" (and stiction,
> but thats fixable.)

I've occasionally thought that it would be cute to make a little
protocol converter board to interface a modern IDE disk to an old-style
SCSI/SASI bus, for use with the Acorn winchester controller or something
like that.  Kind of like a contemporary equivalent of the Xebec
SCSI-ESDI/MFM converters that you used to see back in the day.

> I've never used an MDFS, but guess it is very noisy, and the server room
> is in a wall cupboard oppostite the "programming/office/darkroom area"
> which is a little dressing room sorta annex with no door off my bedroom.
> so noise is a major issue for me, and the FDFS is totally silent when
> the disks are not being accessed.

Funnily enough the MDFS is also completely silent: it's just the drives
that make a noise.  At one point I had my MDFS connected to an old
(ex-Sun4) 5.25" disk pack, which was almost inconceivably loud.
Eventually I fiddled the MDFS to make it generate SCSI parity, and
replaced the drive with a newer, barely audible, 3.5" one.

p.