I will say right off that I have never in my entire life installed, configured or used either an MFM or RLL hard drive. Although I've been fascinated by vintage computer hardware for many many years, it's only very recently that I've begun actually collecting and working with it. Therefore, my actual hands-on drive configuration experience is limited solely to IDE, SATA and whatever proprietary interface the Toshiba T3100 uses (Which only supports two models of drives, both hard-coded in the BIOS under a "pick one" selection menu).

I am planning to install a hard drive into my AT&T PC 6300. Perusing eBay brought me across a Seagate ST-250R 40MB RLL drive. The price was right for my desires, so I purchased it. While looking through the seller's other items, I came across a Western Digital WD1004-27X RLL drive controller card, also at a really good price. I shot off a quick question to the seller asking if it was the controller that originally came with the drive, he replied that it is not. But. after being told by a friend that "any controller will work as long as it's RLL", I went ahead and ordered the controller anyway, and got combined shipping on both parts for an even better discount.

Unfortunately, I neglected to do proper research before clicking the Buy Now button, and now I fear I may have bought an incompatible controller card. It IS an RLL controller and it WILL fit in the AT&T PC, that much I can confirm. Unfortunately, from the (very limited) information I can find, the drive configuration on the controller appears to be selected using only jumpers and not a BIOS or other setup program. The table of jumper settings lists only four different valid CHS configurations, none of which match the specs of the ST-250R. HOWEVER...along with that information is a tidbit stating the controller supports a maximum of "1024 cylinders", which implies that it should be possible to somehow configure the controller to operate a drive other than the four jumper-selectable settings.

My massive inexperience with MFM/RLL drives forces me to ask the experts...is the WD1004-27X controller compatible with the ST-250R drive? If so, what do I need to do to configure it, and how? I presume in this case I would disregard the jumpers and use a program or something else, but like I said, I've never done this before, so I have zero idea about what to do. I do have the original AT&T boot disks which, if I recall correctly, does have the debug program on it.. Unfortunately I currently have no ability to create further disks or add to the disks I already have in case a different program is needed.

Here is the page where I found the specs/setup info for the WD1004-27X controller: http://museum.ttrk.ee/th99/c/U-Z/20223.htm

Here is the page where I found the specs for the ST-250R drive: ftp://ftp.seagate.com/techsuppt/rll/st250r.txt

FYI, I have not yet actually received either part, and they are arriving internationally so it may be a couple weeks before I get them. I wanted to ask now, though, so I could be prepared for when they do arrive.

Thank you.