While not fully comprehensive... have you looked here?

http://www.ibmfiles.com/pages/adf/adfs.htm

Or

Here?

http://apricot.retropc.se/files/area45/index.htm

The second link has the setup adf file for a seagate rll controller, which is probably the one you need?

Regardless, this is an rll drive (note the R designator) so you need an rll controller to use it correctly.

I'd try getting the existing controller working first.

The sec0nd link has dead shortcuts, but identifies the ST506 RLL controller as @DFFD.ADF

That ADF is available (unlabelled) in the first link.

Give it a shot, and see.

uridium wrote on 2024-02-21, 10:54:

Advice and speculation gratefully appreciated. 😀

FYI it is possible to recover the image of such HDD without the controller. I used Greaseweazle for that - with the help of its author as intially I wasn't proficient enough in Python to adapt the code myself (and both the PC side software and FW is not trivial). Originally I was only after MFM HDDs but I spent some time on this and was also able to analyze and read RLL formatted HDD. None of this is exactly easy but it can be done if you really want that data recovered.

Hi Weird_W,

Thanks for getting back to me. I'll take a copy of what's there. The .se url sadly only has the top files. The bottom list is all 404 not found.

Unfortunately, I have the disk mounted to the bracket without the controller. I thought I'd ask here which controller I should hunt down and plug into an ISA bus to try and archive the data. Also how to configure the drive geometry for that card.

Going forward later on.. I have great hopes that this project: https://electronics.dose.se MCA XT-IDE will come to fruition and will allow me to run the full system. Backing up and picking through the old HDD is my first concern. 😀

[/quote]
FYI it is possible to recover the image of such HDD without the controller. I used Greaseweazle for that - with the help of its author as intially I wasn't proficient enough in Python to adapt the code myself (and both the PC side software and FW is not trivial). Originally I was only after MFM HDDs but I spent some time on this and was also able to analyze and read RLL formatted HDD. None of this is exactly easy but it can be done if you really want that data recovered.
[/quote]

I'd never considered the Greaseweazle. I've seen them mentioned for quite a while but have no experience with them. Yeah I'm hopeful that it doesn't just have user files on it. Hopefully theres the setup and configuration utils for the machine. It would seem that the Qi 330's are pretty thin on the ground so getting these things archived and put online where people can get at them is my primary goal 😀 Preservation first!

Did you mean ST1106R instead of 1105? Because I can't find any info on 1105 model whatsoever.

uridium wrote on 2024-02-21, 22:33:

I'd never considered the Greaseweazle. I've seen them mentioned for quite a while but have no experience with them.

Short version is the device is meant for low-level reading, and writing, of floppies. Much cheaper and open source version of KryoFlux which got a bit too "elitist", at least for my taste.
With custom software the hardware side of Greaseweazle has just enough resources to handle reading MFM and RLL HDDs - but not writing. Also you'd probably want to look for the newest (not sure if released yet) versions that should have USB2.0 uplink to the PC. That would resolve some of the issues I had to deal with on my unit - when it comes to HDDs, floppies don't really need that much bandwidth.

uridium wrote on 2024-02-21, 22:33:

Preservation first!

I agree. However I'm not sure you've dealt with MFM or RLL HDDs and controllers before? Are you aware that pretty much each and every controller has its own system of writing data on the magnetic sufrace? Which means you can only read the HDD with the exact same hardware that was used to write to it. While, in general, the same type of controller (but not the very same unit) should be able to read/write to the HDD, it's not 100% certain. There might be different revisions, or firmware changes, or even some cabling differences that might prevent you from reading the data. In fact reading anything at all. Many MFM/RLL controllers will even throw various errors at you, even with HDD connected, unless said HDD is low-level formatted with that particular controller.

So if you can get the original HDD controller for that machine it's a good chance it'll work as-is but it's not certain. Greaseweazle approach is more difficult but at the same time, as long as the data is still there on the platters, allows to overcome all of these problems via software. I'd also recommend it for HDDs that are on the verge of dying, you need a few hours of uptime but after that you work on the raw data stored on modern machine.

uridium wrote on 2024-02-21, 22:30:

Hi Weird_W, […]
Show full quote

Hi Weird_W,

Thanks for getting back to me. I'll take a copy of what's there. The .se url sadly only has the top files. The bottom list is all 404 not found.

Unfortunately, I have the disk mounted to the bracket without the controller. I thought I'd ask here which controller I should hunt down and plug into an ISA bus to try and archive the data. Also how to configure the drive geometry for that card.

Going forward later on.. I have great hopes that this project: https://electronics.dose.se MCA XT-IDE will come to fruition and will allow me to run the full system. Backing up and picking through the old HDD is my first concern. 😀

As Deunan says, each controller does things a little differently.

My cursory investigations show that the original controller was likely to be This Guy.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/162051234662

As far as I can tell, it was the only mfm/rll controller ibm made.

While looking for options to do xt-ide on an mca system (arco ac-1070 ide controller appears unobtanium right now) I found this curious thing on Ebay. It's a 10/100 ethernet card, but is probably 32bit mca, not 16bit mca. Still, has a bootrom socket!

https://www.ebay.com/itm/124414182615?epid=14 … ABk9SR_azwOa5Yw

IBM made scsi controllers for its PS/2 line. That, with a scsi2sd adapter, might give you 'spaceous modern storage'

The greaseweasel should get the raw flux pattern off your drive, at the very least...

G'day,

Your right. I have ST-1150R on the post-it notes around my screen and typed ST1105R. Dash of Lexdysia. I apologise.

I think not knowing much about the grease weasel the easiest thing would still be to try and find an ISA controller that knows how to drive the 1150R and hope for the best. I'm still trying to get the system repaired without the drive. Lots of shamrock green from the 3.6v NiCad sadly. Getting there though on both boards.

Not sure what the controller was from Apricot. I'd be surprised if they simply OEM'd an IBM one? But I guess it's possible. I've seen reference to "The Apricot Disk Controller" for the Qi 330 in some docs.

Very interesting ebay auctions. I'll be happy with the built-in 10Base2/5 ethernet on the mainboard. I have some 32bit MCA(2) cards that are essentially an entire intel PCI bridge for just the intel EEPro100 on there. That made me smirk. HP did a similar thing with their HP-PB 10/100 cards. I have a couple of them in my Nova64.

The disk controller.. I'm wondering how I'd set that up.. as I presume the IBM config reference disks wouldn't work?

Not sure. That'd be something for a month or two down the road toy-budget worth of paydays. 😀 Pretty interesting though.

Regards,
Al Boyanich