OK, anybody have any hints and tips to get an MFM drive working again?
Hi,
We need to recover some data off an old MFM drive. We've got a bunch of those cards, we've got a bunch of drives to experment with, but once we get things working we'll recover some 2x20Mb of data off two 20Mb drives....
We've tried the modern IDE driver, and the 2.4.20 one, and the "old hd only" driver.
Going "retro": Compiling 2.0.39 gives me: "bus error" while doing make dep.
I THINK we have a couple of those cards that don't have any interrupts. Would Linux be able to work with those?
Yes, we pass "hda=615,4,17" to the IDE driver.
Any suggestions of things to try?
Roger.
Signature · 3 lines
** [email protected] ** http://www.BitWizard.nl/ ** +31-15-2600998 ** *-- BitWizard writes Linux device drivers for any device you may have! --* **** "Linux is like a wigwam - no windows, no gates, apache inside!" ****
Quoted 3 lines · Rogier Wolff
Hi,
We need to recover some data off an old MFM drive. We've got a bunch
[...]
Quoted 7 lines
Any suggestions of things to try?
Roger.
Signature · 2 lines
** [email protected] ** http://www.BitWizard.nl/ ** +31-15-2600998 ** *-- BitWizard writes Linux device drivers for any device you may have! --*
Write a driver ;-)
Signature · 2 lines
Måns Rullgård [email protected]
Use a 2.2 kernel.
Quoted 21 lines · Rogier Wolff
Hi,
We need to recover some data off an old MFM drive. We've got a bunch
of those cards, we've got a bunch of drives to experment with, but once we get things working we'll recover some 2x20Mb of data off two 20Mb drives....We've tried the modern IDE driver, and the 2.4.20 one, and the "old hd only" driver.
Going "retro": Compiling 2.0.39 gives me: "bus error" while doing make dep.
I THINK we have a couple of those cards that don't have any interrupts. Would Linux be able to work with those?
Yes, we pass "hda=615,4,17" to the IDE driver.
Any suggestions of things to try?
Roger.
Quoted 11 lines · Rogier Wolff
We need to recover some data off an old MFM drive. We've got a bunch of those cards, we've got a bunch of drives to experment with, but once we get things working we'll recover some 2x20Mb of data off two 20Mb drives....
We've tried the modern IDE driver, and the 2.4.20 one, and the "old hd only" driver.
Going "retro": Compiling 2.0.39 gives me: "bus error" while doing make dep.
Quoted 6 lines
I THINK we have a couple of those cards that don't have any interrupts. Would Linux be able to work with those?
Yes, we pass "hda=615,4,17" to the IDE driver.
Any suggestions of things to try?
First of all, what format is the data on the drives? ext2 or fat?
What mfm card are you using? I assume it is an isa card. (I have never heard of a pci mfm card.)
If this is a one time thing, you might try tracking down an older version of Linux. (One with XT drive support.)
If you can't find one, contact me off-line. I have versions going back to the Yggdrasil beta. An old version of Slackware should work.
Quoted 2 lines · Rogier Wolff
I THINK we have a couple of those cards that don't have any interrupts. Would Linux be able to work with those?
The old hd driver should support this in 2.4 and 2.6. Its fair to say that neither hd.c nor xd.c get much testing nowdays. One of the biggest problems tends to be finding a machine you can use the old MFM cards in because any motherboard disk controller will clash.
If you aren't in any hurry you can call handler() from the start of the timer timeout function if you lack IRQ's.
Quoted 8 lines · Alan Cox
Quoted 2 lines · Rogier Wolff
I THINK we have a couple of those cards that don't have any interrupts. Would Linux be able to work with those?
The old hd driver should support this in 2.4 and 2.6. Its fair to say that neither
hd.cnorxd.cget much testing nowdays. One of the biggest problems tends to be finding a machine you can use the old MFM cards in because any motherboard disk controller will clash.
Not to mention that many MFM boards were not very static resistant and tended to die if handled without proper grounding. (I lost one that way.)
Quoted 6 lines · Rogier Wolff
We need to recover some data off an old MFM drive. We've got a bunch of those cards, we've got a bunch of drives to experment with, but once we get things working we'll recover some 2x20Mb of data off two 20Mb drives....
Any suggestions of things to try?
What OS was used to write to the MFM drives? Use it.
--
Jeff Woods <[email protected]>