Date   : Wed, 17 May 2006 10:52:19 +0100
From   : "Ian Wolstenholme" <BBCMailingList@...>
Subject: Re: Back in circulation

The problem [briefly] is that practically every 50-pin SCSI disc drive
I have tried connecting up to the Acorn Winchester host adapter (apart
from "known" good ones like the Rodime RO652) does not work.  At best
the Beeb ignores it, looking at the floppy drive when you try to mount,
or at worst I get all kinds of whining noises coming out of the various PSUs
running the show and the ribbon cable between the host adapter and the
SCSI drive starting to melt.

I think the low level format/256 bytes per sector issue is a bit of a red 
herring because if ADFS won't attempt to mount the drive in the first
place, it doesn't really matter how it is going to be formatted.

I've never had any difficulty with ST506 drives and a separate Winchester
controller board (although admittedly the controllers support 256 bps).
With that setup, ADFS tries to mount the drive, finds it isn't formatted and
reports a disc error and then you can go in and format it.

With SCSI drives, missing out the Winchester controller, the result is
invariably nothing or flames.

Best wishes,



Ian

----- Original Message -----
From: Jules Richardson
To:  bbc-micro@...
Sent:  Sun, 14 May 2006 16:04:44 +0100
Subject: Re: [BBC-Micro] Back in circulation

Ian Wolstenholme wrote:
> What Winchester card?  I would be interested in knowing what you have as I
> am in the fourth year of struggling with the "SCSI drive + Acorn host adapter +
> BBC micro = Bang/Whine/Melt/Nothing/All of the above" equation.

What was the problem again? I've never had any trouble, but then I've never 
tried LLFing a drive from the beeb so maybe that's a whole can of worms...

cheers

Jules