You can establish which modulation technique was used by looking at the
crystal. If it's a harmonic of 5 MHz, it's MFM, if it's a harmonic of 7.5
MHz, it's probably RLL.
Dick
-----Original Message-----
From: Fred Cisin (XenoSoft) <cisin(a)xenosoft.com>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Wednesday, May 26, 1999 6:55 PM
Subject: Re: non-SCSI disks on a SCSI disk interface
>> <OMTI (SMS) and ADAPTEC made quite a few of these SCSI-HOST to MFM or RLL
>> <devices. It seems to me that NOVELL capitalized on this proliferation
of
>
>Who wants/needs?:
>SMS OMTI 7100 REV C has 50 pin dual row header (SCSI?), power
>connector, 34 pin dual row header with two 20 pin (MFM? RLL? ESDI? - who
>knows which it is?) EPROM is labelled 1002286-A
>
>
>--
>Fred Cisin cisin(a)xenosoft.com
>XenoSoft http://www.xenosoft.com
>2210 Sixth St. (510) 644-9366
>Berkeley, CA 94710-2219
>
ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote:
> Most later workstations had SCSI interfaces for the hard disk (even if
> they then broke that by insisting on an ST506 drive on the other side of
> a SCSI->ST506 interface, as ICL and Torch both did). Some older
Sun did this too. It wasn't 'til SunOS 4.0 that the SCSI-disk driver
would actually talk to SCSI disks. Before that, it wanted to talk to
an Adaptec ACB4000 or an Emulex MD21 (for ESDI disks).
I think I remember reading somewhere that this was done because the
SCSI-to-whatever interface had the intelligence for bad-block
remapping. But I wouldn't be surprised to find that the cost of the
drives had something to do with it; I remember Amiga folks scheming to
use ACB4000 boards with their SCSI interfaces because it was cheaper
than buying a SCSI disk, and I've opened a few Mac SCSI hard disk
boxes to find the same sort of thing inside.
-Frank McConnell
<I've had decent results with the ADAPTEC 4070's too. What I'm mainly
The 4070 and a maxtor2190 will get you near 200mb.
I also have a couple of boxes (disk, powersupply and scsi bridge controller)
that I use for VIsual1050s that are the adaptec non RLL board. Those also
run quantum d540s (31mb). For a lot of small stuff the Quantum d540 is a
reliable st506 interface MFM drive, it runs RLL encoding well and is fast.
Besides, I have a big bunch of them so if a box doesn't use all 512
cylinders or 8 heads not great feeling of loss.
<interested in is having a boxed drive, in this case, complete with bridge
<controller, which moves from system to system, as I do with my native SCSI
<drives. Unfortunately, there aren't any MFM/RLL drives big enough to be
there are a few EDSI bridges that would easily do serious space. Of
course you can just stuff any scsi DISK into a box and be done and skip
the bridge board. the latter is har not to do when for 200$ you can get
a couple of GB of narrow ultra SCSI and box for maybe 19-29$.
I do that with a bunch of DEC RZ56s (680mb 5.25" full height scsi) I have.
Allison
some guy locally has one for sale. I thought it was a foreign-made apple
compatible but not sure. can anyone clarify? system disks are manuals are
included with the machine, i've been told. I hope it's worth $20 i'm willing
to offer the guy for it.
Anthony Clifton said:
> On a disk that Doug Coward sent me, which doesn't boot but can be read
> once I boot of one of the disks sent to me by Don Maslin,
Sorry, I'm just back from a vacation trip and I'm still not back at
work yet, so I'm doing this from memory. It been at least a year since
I sent that disk, but I seem to remember that I sent you an email after
I sent the disk saying something like "Oops, by the way, by mistake the
NSDOS disk I sent you is a special version compiled to load at 0100 hex
not the normal 2000 hex." Look at the label, if this is the case it
should say North Star DOS (version something) AT 100. So (if this is
the case) you would need RAM starting from 0000, and BASIC on this
disk would expect to find the DOS I/O vectors starting from 0100 hex,
but the BASIC programs would work with the normal version of DOS.
Without being able to search through my old email, because I'm not
at work, thats how I remember it. Sorry, I just seems to have gotten
in a hurry and sent the wrong DOS on the disk without thinking. I run
CP/M also so I just naturally start RAM at 0000.
I hope I'm not thinking of someone else I sent NSDOS to.
I'm glad you're having so much success.
--Doug
====================================================
Doug Coward dcoward(a)pressstart.com (work)
Sr. Software Eng. mranalog(a)home.com (home)
Press Start Inc. http://www.pressstart.com
Sunnyvale,CA
Curator
Museum of Personal Computing Machinery
http://www.best.com/~dcoward/museum/
and the new
Analog Computer Museum and history Center
http://www.best.com/~dcoward/analog
====================================================
On May 27, 0:13, Tony Duell wrote:
> Yes, but have you seen the price of IDC DD50 plugs? Last time I needed
> some, the standard 'Amphenol' 50 pin plugs (like overgrown Centronics
> plugs) were a couple of pounds a time, but the DD50s were \pounds 17.00
> or so...
>
> I must admit they're (DD50s) a much nicer connector, though.
You can get Amphenol IDC ones that take *standard* ribbon cable (not the
delicate half-pitch stuff) from Videk, for about a fiver.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Dept. of Computer Science
University of York
<OMTI (SMS) and ADAPTEC made quite a few of these SCSI-HOST to MFM or RLL
<devices. It seems to me that NOVELL capitalized on this proliferation of
And Xybec.
<Has anyone ever used a SCSI-hosted bride controller of this sort with
<essentially no problems at all? If so, I'd surely like to know which one
<and how it was implemented.
I have the following:
Adaptec 4070 SCSI to RLL, use that with a quantum D540.
Xybec 14xx in a CP/M system (SB180, with SCSI adaptor) (miniscibe 3.5"mfm)
DEC TK50Z SCSI to DEC TK50 DLT tape on a Microvax VIA CMD200 scsi card.
All work with minimal setup.
Allison
"Richard Erlacher" <edick(a)idcomm.com> wrote:
> Has anyone ever used a SCSI-hosted bride controller of this sort with
> essentially no problems at all? If so, I'd surely like to know which one
> and how it was implemented.
Um, yeah. I've had several of the Emulex MD21s in service on up to
300MB drives. They worked. Especially after we got the problem child
to put his drive cabinet on his desk instead of on the floor.
Here's another question for Chuck: if it was purely an economic
decision, why did Sun's sd driver require the ACB4000 or MD21?
I once tried to get my 2/120 w/SunOS 3.5 to talk to a SCSI disk.
No go. So I tried again, with a similar disk (but ESDI) behind
an MD21, and it worked just fine.
-Frank McConnell
>I've had decent results with the ADAPTEC 4070's too. What I'm mainly
>interested in is having a boxed drive, in this case, complete with bridge
>controller, which moves from system to system, as I do with my native SCSI
>drives. Unfortunately, there aren't any MFM/RLL drives big enough to be
>interesting.
Someone should correct me if I'm wrong (I'd be interested in knowing that
I'm wrong!), but the largest capacity MFM geometry is that of the Maxtor
XT2190 (1024 cylinders * 15 heads), giving you just under 150 Mbytes (M=10**6)
after formatting at 19 sectors/track. And the RLL version gets
another 30% or so of capacity.
Hitachi ESDI drives are available up to 1.5Gbytes or so, and work well on
Emulex ESDI<->SCSI controller.
All the above was assuming you meant size=capacity. If you meant
size=cubic feet or pounds, I'm sure you could put a 14" CDC SMD drive
on the other side of a SMD<->SCSI controller.
Of course, large embedded-controller SCSI drives are readily available on the
surplus market these days. 9 Gbyte drives start below $150.00, and
2 Gbyte drives seem to get around $40.
--
Tim Shoppa Email: shoppa(a)trailing-edge.com
Trailing Edge Technology WWW: http://www.trailing-edge.com/
7328 Bradley Blvd Voice: 301-767-5917
Bethesda, MD, USA 20817 Fax: 301-767-5927
I've had decent results with the ADAPTEC 4070's too. What I'm mainly
interested in is having a boxed drive, in this case, complete with bridge
controller, which moves from system to system, as I do with my native SCSI
drives. Unfortunately, there aren't any MFM/RLL drives big enough to be
interesting. Nevertheless, it's a pregnant vehicle for modularity in system
functionality. (almost sounds like gov-speak, doesn't it?) The idea is
that I want to house software packages in boxes of their own so they can be
run wherever there's a spot open.
Dick
-----Original Message-----
From: Allison J Parent <allisonp(a)world.std.com>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Wednesday, May 26, 1999 5:28 PM
Subject: Re: non-SCSI disks on a SCSI disk interface (was Re: Space, the
next frontier)
><OMTI (SMS) and ADAPTEC made quite a few of these SCSI-HOST to MFM or RLL
><devices. It seems to me that NOVELL capitalized on this proliferation of
>
>And Xybec.
>
><Has anyone ever used a SCSI-hosted bride controller of this sort with
><essentially no problems at all? If so, I'd surely like to know which one
><and how it was implemented.
>
>I have the following:
>
> Adaptec 4070 SCSI to RLL, use that with a quantum D540.
> Xybec 14xx in a CP/M system (SB180, with SCSI adaptor) (miniscibe 3.5"mfm)
> DEC TK50Z SCSI to DEC TK50 DLT tape on a Microvax VIA CMD200 scsi card.
>
>All work with minimal setup.
>
>
>Allison
>