CMS External Hard drive
James S Blackmon
FCC ID: FUL4TTSTACK3
Model: STACK/3
CMS Enhancements, INC
Made in the USA
The hard drive inside is a Seagate ST 225N 21.3 mb after I looked it up.
Power supply board inside lists it as Skynet Technologies 1988 ((yeah I
got the predessor of the Terminator just kiddin))
It has two 25 pin ports on the back and 8 dip switches.
What can you tell me about this unit? Can it be used with an IBM if so
what drivers or cards are necessary?
The unit powers up and spins but does little else. From looking at is
inside it looks like it needs a controller in the computer that it is
being used with.
--
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Charles E. Bortle, Jr.
Hello,
A Seagate ST225 is an MFM drive, and yes you can use it on an IBM PC. You need an MFM controller card.
The controller card either has to have a hard written bios drive param table, or jumpers that allow selection of
the correct parameter table. (If you don't need to boot from the drive, you can build your own disk parameter
table for the drive with your own program that must execute before accessing the drive)
The 225 is a very relyable drive...I have two of them in an old IBM PC I built up from scrap parts. These drives
were in use in my original PC for about 8 years, then sat on a shelf for some years. Now they are running fine
in the "scrap" system. No spindle freeze up either! Plus, you can low level format them if necessary, unlike
modern IDE drives with zone formatting.
I would suggest you ignore the back panel cabling, and either run longer ribbon cables from the controller
card to the drive, or mount it in the computer chassis. You can mount two half-height 225's in one full
height bay, or mount a half-height floppy in the same bay with the 225.
Charles
Charles cbr...@ix.netcom.com
"For God So Loved The World, That He Gave His
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Bill Moroney
part number to mean SCSI. The drive itself, of course, is still an MFM
ST225; it just has a different electronics board.
Hope this helps.
Bill