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Western Europe Wanted: Working ST-506 MFM Hard Drive for BBC Winchester unit

Covers: Germany, France, UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Monaco and Liechtenstein

The IT Crowd

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Hi all
I'm currently looking for a fully working ST-506 MFM Hard Drive for my BBC Winchester unit.

Full height would be preferable. Something like Seagate, NEC, Rodime. Microscribe etc.

I'm based in the UK.

Please let me know if you can help me.
Thanks
 
So I tested it and it works really well, low level formatted with a WD1002-27X and formatted it after that on a stock 3.3 MS-DOS all ok too.
But there is something weird going on, I have 32599552 available bytes......on a, according to the specs I found, 20MB harddisk.
But this harddisk has a "APT Applied Peripherals Technology Belgium NV" sticker on it so I wonder if it had a "tune up" or something, is that even possible ?
 
Hi.

Just sent you
Ow wait...the WD1002-27X is a RLL controller.....duh....sorry. I will dig up a real MFM controller and test again! 🫣
Hi there.

I've just sent you a message.

Many thanks... Oh, and apologies regarding the delay.
 
I'm looking for an ST-506 drive, not really sure if the adapted controller would accept RLL. I have a feeling it will though.
Then you know that a ST-506 drive is only 5megs in size. That is why I asked. A drive with ST-506 compatible interface might go to around 100 megs as I recall ( not really important number though ). I have a real ST-506 drive that I used with my Forth computer. These drives have a killer issue if you accidentally rotate the drive backwards. The back edge of the heads are really sharp and will dig into the media. It is important to park the heads near the center of the disk if you are transporting as a slight backwards rotation is less likely to damage the disk.
Dwight
 
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