When were MFM hard drives no longer produced? What would the latest PC to use one without bottlenecks be? Something like a 386SX 16? And what was the highest capacity MFM hard drive? Thanks.
Dedicated Windows 95 Aficionado for good reasons:
http://toastytech.com/evil/setup.html
Between 1985 and 1988 was the real transition period where MFM drives began to step aside for SCSI and 8-bit IDE interfaces (and ESDI briefly for a few other vendors). Nobody was making MFM by the 90's.
Highest capacity MFM drive I have ever seen was 160mb and it's the full-height Maxtor beast that resides in my MicroVAX 2000 right now.
"It's science. I ain't gotta explain sh*t" 
Nowhere near the 386's (IDE was already the standard), they were intended for XT's so I'd bet on the first crippled 286 IBM's
wrote:Nobody was making MFM by the 90's.
Second that...
wrote:my MicroVAX 2000 right now.
Ultrix or VMS?
Trailing edge computing.
Latest I recall was a 286, but that still needed 2:1 interleave.
A 386, can't remember if it was MFM or RLL - had an 8k buffered controller so was 1:1 interleave
Just saw an IBM PS/2 386DX 16 with MFM drives.
Dedicated Windows 95 Aficionado for good reasons:
http://toastytech.com/evil/setup.html
Yeah, but IBM did not support it for long.
IBM quickly dropped ST-506 in favour of ESDI in later model variants, and it wasn't even offered in the Model 70. Logically, the BIOS support for the ST-506 controller was removed in later board variants (20 MHz and up): You can configure the controller, but noone will access it...so leave the ST-506 controller in a 16 MHz machine.
I don't doubt that there was a few stragglers using MFM in the 386 era.
Ultrix or VMS?
Ultrix.
"It's science. I ain't gotta explain sh*t"
wrote:Yeah, but IBM did not support it for long. […]
Yeah, but IBM did not support it for long.
IBM quickly dropped ST-506 in favour of ESDI in later model variants, and it wasn't even offered in the Model 70. Logically, the BIOS support for the ST-506 controller was removed in later board variants (20 MHz and up): You can configure the controller, but noone will access it...so leave the ST-506 controller in a 16 MHz machine.
I don't doubt that there was a few stragglers using MFM in the 386 era.
Ultrix or VMS?
Ultrix.
wow, you must be older than me. But it's a good thing.. 😜
Some years ago a couple of brand new looking Vax stations slipped from me at an auction, but was lucky to grab a pair of DEC3000, one was still unopened in its wrapping and everything, I keep it as a treasure though my intention is one day learn VMS, I had enough of tru64 in my life and UNIX in general. I do not live in North America or Europe so this kind of hardware is very rare.
Sorry for derailing the thread a bit.
Trailing edge computing.
I don't know about actual drives, but I have a WD MFM/RLL controller card dated May 1990.
