What is this IC?

[booliminator]

I bought a mixed lot of electronic components a few weeks ago and i ave about 30 of these WD10C20B-PH 28 pin IC's and I have absolutely NO CLUE AT ALL what they are for. I found the datasheet for it and its in the link below, (Link is safe).

If anyone has any clue what this is and what it may be used for lemme know, thanks.




**broken link removed**

 

[Ian Rogers]

Hard disk controller.... Western digital hard drive..... I think they are still in use....

 

[booliminator]

Any clue what exactly what it does? Like what opperations it can execute?

 

[Ian Rogers]

They are part of a chipset that physically reads the spinning disc... I doubt very much if it can be used for anything else... They are RLL / MFM decoders.. They clean the output signal and pass the data to another chip in the chipset...

 

[unclejed613]

i doubt these are in use anymore... MFM and RLL drives went the way of the dinosaur long ago.... there were some "transition" drives with an IDE interface attached to an MFM drive, most of these were seagate 40Meg drives that were in Compaq "portable" computers.... but that was in 1995 or 1996... i think because Compaq had bought more MFM drives than they needed, and had to adapt their overstock to an IDE (now better known as PATA) interface. to low-level format these drives, they could be disconnected from the IDE adapter board, and formatted with a MFM controller, then be reconnected to the IDE interface. unless you're running some version of DOS those old drives make better paperweights than storage media.

 

[Ian Rogers]

I still use SCSI drives .. On my Amiga ( I know... I should get a life ) ... These things still use MFM to access the drive... Still your right though unclejed.... Doubt you'll find it in SATAII drives

 

[4pyros]

In other words nothing but dead bugs. LOL

 

[doviethungecs2011]

13/3/2013 :d

 

[booliminator]

Thanks for the answers... i guess if anyone wants them for whatever... lemme know and we can work out mailing. Not sure if im allowed to say that in these forums, but if im not, I apologize.