[Coco] CoCo Hard Drive History

[Bruce W. Calkins]

>>----- Original Message ----- 
>>From: "goosey"
>>
>>> Since I know the 1010 and 2010 are MFM controllers I assume the
>>> Eliminator's 1002 is also MFM.
>>>
>>> Willard
>>
>
> I believe the B&B supported the WD1002-WX1, WD1002-XTGEN, and WD1002-27X 
> (RLL).
> I have 2-3 of those things in the garage in the CoCo storage bins...
>
> Speaking of HDDs...
>
> Will the Disto SASI adapters talk to a SCSI HDD directly?
>
> Are these WD SASI-to-MFM boards similar to the controller boards used in 
> the Kaypro 10?
> Or is that a different board? I think those were WD1002-HD0?
> --

======================

Now that I see that written out, yes it was the WD-1002 type controllers.  I 
did have a couple in stock before "the move" in '04.

And yes I have connected the Disto interface directly to a 5.25" full height 
SCSI drive.  The Maxtor XT-2190 MFM drive series through an Adaptec 
SCSI-2-MFM board offered a lot more capacity at the time.  I theory two 
adaptor cards with two drives each were possible.  There was one "little" 
gotcha.  To run the second adapter board required a little trace cut that I 
only found documentation for in the Adaptec manual.  I have 4 drives, and 3 
cards to go with them, if they have survived storage.  However the 
maintenance of two drives gets intensive.  Backing up the RGB-DOS portion 
from one drive to another through the RAM disk took somewhat more than 14 
hours.  The OS-9 portion using DSAVE took almost as long.

Bruce W.