Uncreative Labs

Joined: 05 Oct 2007 Posts: 24 Location: Catalunya

Hi in a local supply store i found the chance to get a ST-4096 HD NEW for dirty cheap.

As a catalog of the store says... (Xeroxed and cardboard cover That's old too!)
The disk is a 5.25" Full Height With 81 MB capacity MFM and includes an XT controller (ST-11M) Sadly looks to come without bezel, so i would need to scavenge the one of my 10MB one...

Costing like 30$ and being new is a good pick? Shocked

Joined: 05 Aug 2008 Posts: 23

I am not sure what new means in this context. New old stock, as in never installed in a machine?

This was a good drive in the day, but not as long lived as the ST225 (21MB) or ST251 (42MB). In terms of inflation adjusted storage (okay, I made that up) it would be equivalent to a 500GB disk today.

The drive sold for almost a thousand dollars in '88. If it works it's worth $20 or $30.

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

what was said was correct
remember at least dos 3.30 was needed and max partition size will be 32 megs each ( multiple partitions are allowed with ms-dos 3.30)

run spintest ( from spinrite people) to determine best interleave. Max with a XT controller is 3:1, but 4:1 or even 5:1 ( i know it is slower) results in MUCH better performance.
this has to be done as a fresh low-level format .

However, that said. a 20 or 40 meg drive is hard to fill up with XT Class programs.

Joined: 05 Oct 2007 Posts: 24 Location: Catalunya

Hi, i finally thrusted in self confidence grabbed the disk at the same week i posted the question.

Davy, the disk was NEVER sold or seen use, the installation was a relative snap (I needed to replace the new disk fascia because i liked more the original with IBM logo).

I first removed the 5.25 floppy and mounted the new drive aside the 10Meg, put the new controler at side and booted up, but not worked, Evil or Very Mad

, then i leave alone the new drive and reassembled the floppy.

Whith this the computer booted correctly (As correctly a IBM boots without OS) Whith the help of this page XT info plus the advice of disk´s manual (A ply of xeroxed jargon) I was capable of format it (Never again, SLOW!) Then i installed some MS-DOS 5 i backed up of the Old hard disk and the other old content, leaving me about of 73 MB of real estate free.

To exercise it i connected with laplink with my modern DOS machine (This week a 486 DX4) and copied the 8088 corruption demo (10MB) wich worked fine.

63 MB to go

Copied anything usable on XT in 100 or so magazine disks, ANYTHING became 10 MB of data (Corrupted files and AT elitist stuff was the rest)

Then i got more of 50 MB free... Very Happy

I think Duke Nukem 3D would not run on this... Not for lack of space.

As a side note: Now i got a pristine 10MB clunker with 'some' bad sectors looking a loving home.

Regards.

Joined: 21 May 2006 Posts: 47 Location: London, England

I would be interested in your 10MB drive! But I am wondering if it can survive shipping to UK Laughing