Personally with Shimano STI shifters and road front derailleur on a MTB crankset, I could never get it to shift reliably on all 3 rings. It could sort of get it to work on the stand but in the real world I could only shift consistently between 2.

I believe that's what Andy_K meant when he said it's easier with a double. Even though you have a triple FD, you removed one of the rings and can use the limit screws to control the travel for the remaining two.

That was a steal. I would have loved to have drops on my old RockHopper.

I actually was able to get my road shifters to shift between all three rings with the XT derailleur, but I had to set the limits very narrow so that the chain rubbed when it was on the small front ring with the big rear cog or the big front ring and the small rear cog. Notice, these are not the cross-chaining combinations but rather the preferred combinations. I also had to use an inline barrel adjuster and fiddle with cable tension quite a bit.

With a double, you just need to pull between two extremes, and the limit screws stop it where you want it to stop, so there's less precision required. With a triple, you tend to either overshoot the middle chain ring or not be able to get it all the way to one of the others. Unless you have exactly the right cable tension. Of course, this is often true if with components that are meant to be compatible.

With the setup described in my first post, I just pulled the cable tight by hand and it worked great on the first try. I've never had that happen with a triple setup before.

Yeah, I think that bike would really sell today. I've been tempted to convert my RockHopper to drops, but then I'd have to get another bike to be my flat bar mountain bike. Hmmm, now that I think about it, I'm not sure I see the downside.

I remember when Specialized was blowing those out. I really wanted one, but couldn't justify it at the time as I was already riding a custom Ibis with drop bars. When I first saw the RockCombo, I immediately thought it was Specialized trying to copy the '87 Bridgestone MB-1.

Ive been doing some thinking, i may be wrong but maybe its not that STI's dont work with MTB derailleurs maybe its just the swing style, now thinking back the only front derailleurs i had problems with where bottom swing which are primarily MTB but i have seen some on roadies, but the top swing seem to work just fine. Wait just as i was writing that my brain start working more oh wait nope i confused my self further, ill get back on that thought later when i get off work, I have an idea