Miniscribe hard disk with a MFM to IDE adapter board

First post, by ultimate386

I have recently acquired two Miniscribe model 8212 Type 1 hard disk drives. These are MFM drives - certainly old, but nothing particularly noteworthy about them, I suppose. What made these interesting (to me, at least) is that they are MFM drives mated to a bridge board that converts the interface to IDE! The drives have Compaq logos on them and appear to be meant for the Compaq Portable II. I found this write up while searching for info: https://buildingtents.com/2017/01/01/restorin … aq-portable-ii/.

I am in the early stages of testing them with a generic 386 motherboard and IDE controller. The first drive had a stuck spindle, but a few quick twists got it moving (I haven't tried the second drive yet). I was able to fdisk and format, but got about half the drive as bad sectors. SpinRite and SpeedStor refused to touch the drive. I think I may have had the drive geometry wrong in BIOS though - I'll update this post as the situation evolves.

I am curious: If I were to transfer the drive to standard MFM controller (which would involve a low level format), I suspect I would no longer be able to use it with the MFM to IDE bridge unless that board could perform its own low level format?

Now, pictures!