5 Jun
2012
5 Jun
'12
3:17 p.m.
I've got a Drivetek OEM manual for the 320, but
it's not nearly as
detailed as other OEM manuals. ?It discusses the basic philosophy of
the positioner, embedded servo, 600 RPM, etc., but no schematics or
anything other than the pinout for the 34-position connector. ?At
least that's what I remember without actually going digging for it.
I managed to find quite a bit of info about this stuff in the patent
for the design, US Patent 4630145.
The service literature for the Kaypro Robie may offer
some additional
clues, but I suspect that there's not much, if anything, there
either.
I checked, and nothing. I did find the pinout in the manual for the
Data Technology DTC-500B controller card though.
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/dtc/DTC-500B_Series_User_Manual.pdf
I've worked on hard drives with embedded servo,
the first being the
never-relased Ontrack 5.25" drive. ?There, the mechanism was a rather
complicated mechanical affair that used a system of sleeves and
solenoids to create a binary-encoded positioner. ?There's certainly a
patent circa early 1980s somewhere on that thing, even if it never
saw the light of day.
Interesting!
If you get a chance and dig out your drive and read out the
microcontroller (or just attempt), that would be awesome. It's
believed that the later code fixes some bugs in the older versions
that cause disk damage, but comparing the older version would be
worthwhile. Also I'm quite certain the 6.6mb drive does at least some
things differently. Photos or scans of the board are useful too.
I'm looking for other unusual floppy drives, but even these Kodaks are
hard enough to find.
--Dave