16 Dec
2009
16 Dec
'09
4:06 p.m.
On 16 Dec 2009 at 19:59, Tony Duell wrote:
If byu 'controller board' you mean the thign
that plugs into the host
computer (such as into an ISA slot), then I would think it's more
likely to be QIC-02.
No--I'm referring to the board labeled "Tape Controller Board" that
sits in the last slot of the card cage on this thing. There are
three cards--the front-most seems to have all of the power-handling
circuitry on it for handling the capstan motor, and head position.
The second has a mixed bag of discrete components, a few DIPs and a
number of TO-100 ICs. The third card is labeled as the controller
and has what I stated before--and it uses 7400 TTL logic, not LS.
I'm familiar with QIC-02 and QIC-36 both; I have Wangtek and Caliper
QIC-36 drives as well as several (mostly Tandberg) QIC-02 drive.
There is *no* intelligence on this drive. It's quite large--fits in
a 6U rackmount panel and is powered by a separate +5, +/-15v Lambda
power supply mounted on its own 3U section.
Given the age of this drive, I'm a bit concerned that the 50-
conductor interface might be proprietary, and not anything familiar,
such as QIC-36.
The only mention on the web that I can find of this drive is from a
paper from 1976 saying that it was used to create the NBS (now NIST)
quarter-inch tape calibration standard.
The branding on the front is 3M Mincom.
I've got an old Adic drive that's similar in size, but it takes the
old Iomat pre-formatted tapes and has a 6502 on the controller board
(again, one of three) with an EPROM bearing a 3M copyright sticker.
--Chuck