Here’s a collection of all the tools you’ll need to set up an old MFM style hard drive in a XT/286/386/486 computer.

Hardware you’ll need:

• Cables
  • IEC.net has MFM and RLL cables. They can also custom make them for you if you don’t see them on their website.
• MFM Interface board
  • List of common MFM and RLL hard drive controllers
    • WD Model WD1006V-MM2 – 16bit – Manual
    • WD Model WD1003V-SR1 – Manual
  • Remember that 8088 or XT based PC’s ran their ISA bus at 4.77mhz, AT ran at 6mhz, and 386 and beyond ran ISA at 8mhz (though many later ISA systems ran them at 10mhz since ISA is very forgiving and the higher clock speed gave better speeds). This means you may find old 8-bit or AT-based ISA cards won’t work in AT or 386/486 systems since the ISA bus runs too fast.
    • If your BIOS allows it, you may be able slow down the ISA bus speeds and that might help old cards work.
• Drive
  • Seagate ST-225 manual
  • ST-225 Geometry and quick reference guide (cyl: 615, heads: 4, Sectors: 17, precomp: 300, Landing: 670)
• AT power supplies
  • https://www.atxpowersupplies.com/250-watt-at-power-supply-SPI-240G.php
• Software preparation:
  • USB 3.5″ floppy drive to write disks
  • Greaseweazle with 3.5″ or 5.25″ floppy drive

Software

• DOS disks
  • Bootable 6.22 .img with cdrom support
  • Installers and multiple DOS version from Winworldpc
• Low-level format tools
  • Seagate Ontrack Disk Manager – Seagate OEM tool
    • Winworldpc: v3.5 (Seagate OEM) and many others
    • v9.57, v9.61 (Hitachi), v10.46
  • BIOS – many motherboards from the 386/486 era have a low-level format tool in BIOS
  • SpeedStor – v6.0.3 , link 6.0.3, 6.5.0
  • SpinRite
  • debug (with -g=c800:5 command)
• Testing
  • SpinRite II
  • Hard Drive Sentinel
• Tools
  • RawWriteWin to write img files to USB attached floppy drives

Informational links:

• Reference site for a huge number of drive controllers
• Getting an MFM Hard Drive on Pentium II PC
• Old software on WinWorld: OS, apps, tools, games, etc