IBM 6360 - Filesystem(ish) info?

Chuck Guzis cclist at sydex.com
Tue Feb 19 12:54:23 CST 2019


On 2/19/19 8:48 AM, Anders Nelson via cctalk wrote:
> Hi friends,
> 
> Now that I have my glorious disk toaster (2D model I think, says "2D" on
> the drive levers), I want to build a controller for it. I found pinouts and
> some description of the media organization here:
> 
> http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/ibm/6580_Displaywriter/S241-6248-3_Displaywriter_6360_6580_Product_Support_Manual_Feb1983.pdf
> 
> I'd like to actually store data to these disks in the same manner the
> original systems did, and I'm proficient in hardware/firmware. Has anyone
> made a controller for this already? How about emulating the filesystem?
> 
> Any help is appreciated, and I'd open-source whatever I make (PCBs,
> firmware, etc.).

Are you talking about the disk unit for the Displaywriter (6580)?

Those don't use what you'd call a general-purpose filesystem in their
native mode (although there was a version of CP/M 86).  The DW
filesystem is very specific to that word-processing application and
probably not useful for general-purpose applications.  And, of course,
the character code used is EBCDIC.

--Chuck




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