RickNel
Veteran Member
A lot of threads on MFM hard drives seems to end with people saying how crap they are and throwing them out.
In the spirit of this forum, I'm hoping to save one just for the heck of it.
It's an NEC-D3142, 42Mb. On power on, it spins up and seems to seek track 0. It came with an ISA-bus controller card from a Wang 80386 PC, but the card doesn't work in a standard PC ISA slot as far as I can determine in any AT mobo I have - possibly BIOS are all too new.
I have an S-100 system (IMS 5000) that I'm working on. The BIOS can be configured for MFM HDD.
If MFM drives have a reputation for failing, it stands to reason there should be some controller cards around that have no functioning disks to run on them.
Any ideas on where such s-100 MFM controller a card might be found (other than dumpsters)?
Did all MFM controllers have the same 34pin+20pin dual cable connections with the same pinouts?
Also, any source for documentation on the NEC-D3142. It seems to have been a pretty common drive in its time?
Any help or advice appreciated
In the spirit of this forum, I'm hoping to save one just for the heck of it.
It's an NEC-D3142, 42Mb. On power on, it spins up and seems to seek track 0. It came with an ISA-bus controller card from a Wang 80386 PC, but the card doesn't work in a standard PC ISA slot as far as I can determine in any AT mobo I have - possibly BIOS are all too new.
I have an S-100 system (IMS 5000) that I'm working on. The BIOS can be configured for MFM HDD.
If MFM drives have a reputation for failing, it stands to reason there should be some controller cards around that have no functioning disks to run on them.
Any ideas on where such s-100 MFM controller a card might be found (other than dumpsters)?
Did all MFM controllers have the same 34pin+20pin dual cable connections with the same pinouts?
Also, any source for documentation on the NEC-D3142. It seems to have been a pretty common drive in its time?
Any help or advice appreciated