ok, I need to get the data from a Seagate ST-251. The motherboard that hosted the hard drive died, and the next oldest computer I have is a socket 7. Any suggestions? And also, does anyone know about how old these hard drives are? I was born in 1985, and wish to know if indeed if this thing is as old as me. And as a side, the motherboard died earlier this year, and it survived Y2K with not one problem...
I need to get the data from a 5.25 inch hard drive
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fishmahn
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WOW! I haven't heard that part number in... umm, well... yah, almost 20 years... LOL The ST-251 came out around 1985 - maybe 86.
You need to track down an MFM or ST-506 drive controller (2 different ways of describing the HDD controller). Hopefully it was run at standard capacity (40MB) - if it held 60MB you need an RLL controller (a common early 'overclocking' trick to increase capacity) and you need one with the same chip (usually adaptec) as the original or it won't read it properly. The old mobo probably had one on an ISA expansion card that may still work. Then the trick is to find a working computer with ISA slots to install it...
The Y2k issue was quite overblown... except where dates were concerned.
Mike.
<font color=blue>Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside the dog its too dark to read.
-- Groucho Marx</font color=blue>
You need to track down an MFM or ST-506 drive controller (2 different ways of describing the HDD controller). Hopefully it was run at standard capacity (40MB) - if it held 60MB you need an RLL controller (a common early 'overclocking' trick to increase capacity) and you need one with the same chip (usually adaptec) as the original or it won't read it properly. The old mobo probably had one on an ISA expansion card that may still work. Then the trick is to find a working computer with ISA slots to install it...
The Y2k issue was quite overblown... except where dates were concerned.
Mike.
<font color=blue>Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside the dog its too dark to read.
-- Groucho Marx</font color=blue>
yes, I've managed to pull the disk controller out of the computer, and I've tried to plug into the pentium, the only problem I have is that it tells me I have a Primary Floppy Port conflict and a Primary Disk control conflict. So, where do I go from there? The Pentium is a compaq built computer, I do however have a hand built AMD K6-2, maybe I should try that one?
fishmahn
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Hmmm... I was wondering if that would be an issue.
There may be some jumpers on the controller card to change the IRQ/memory addresses and allow them to work in a mobo with onboard HDD/floppy <dredging up memories of ancient history>. If not (and it may not - some of those controllers expected to be the only controller in a PC), maybe the mobo can disable the onboard controllers or in the PCI/PNP setup you can change the onboard controller settings. Failing that, you'll have to track down an older PC that doesn't have onboard floppy/IDE. Pentium & K6 mobos generally came with IDE/Floppy onboard. 386/486s didn't (most of them).
Mike.
<font color=blue>Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside the dog its too dark to read.
-- Groucho Marx</font color=blue>
There may be some jumpers on the controller card to change the IRQ/memory addresses and allow them to work in a mobo with onboard HDD/floppy <dredging up memories of ancient history>. If not (and it may not - some of those controllers expected to be the only controller in a PC), maybe the mobo can disable the onboard controllers or in the PCI/PNP setup you can change the onboard controller settings. Failing that, you'll have to track down an older PC that doesn't have onboard floppy/IDE. Pentium & K6 mobos generally came with IDE/Floppy onboard. 386/486s didn't (most of them).
Mike.
<font color=blue>Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside the dog its too dark to read.
-- Groucho Marx</font color=blue>
seems as if the K6-2 Motherboard doesnt mind the disk controller at all, I've verified that it is indeed showing up. So, enter in the other problem, XP Pro wont reconigize the thing. I'm more of a hardware person, and dont have a clue as to why it reconigize it. I do have a slave on this computer that runs windows 2000, could that solve it or did I finally run out of luck? Also, my two pentiums run win 98, so I could run one of those drives on this mb... (tells you where my preferences lie eh, I got my two AMDs running XP pro and my pentium and pentium II running win 98....)
fishmahn
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Where is it showing up? In BIOS? I thought those had to be configured manually and weren't auto-detected.
Got a Win98 boot disk? Maybe see if it is accessible that way.
I haven't ran an MFM drive on anything newer than a 486, and never with IDE drives onboard too, so I don't think I'll be much more help.
Hopefully crashman will see this - he's so good with the not-so-old older stuff it makes me look like a newb... and I've been doing this for 20+ yrs.
Mike.
<font color=blue>Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside the dog its too dark to read.
-- Groucho Marx</font color=blue>
Got a Win98 boot disk? Maybe see if it is accessible that way.
I haven't ran an MFM drive on anything newer than a 486, and never with IDE drives onboard too, so I don't think I'll be much more help.
Hopefully crashman will see this - he's so good with the not-so-old older stuff it makes me look like a newb... and I've been doing this for 20+ yrs.
Mike.
<font color=blue>Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside the dog its too dark to read.
-- Groucho Marx</font color=blue>
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XP Pro on a K6-2? WTF were you thinking?
I doubt XP will pick up the card because it's not Plug and Play. Install 98. Go ahead and put it on the same drive, you'll get a boot option that way.
<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>
I doubt XP will pick up the card because it's not Plug and Play. Install 98. Go ahead and put it on the same drive, you'll get a boot option that way.
<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>
It runs quite nicely too...TRENDING THREADS
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