17 May
2021
17 May
'21
2:21 p.m.
Most who are familiar with Intertec SuperBrain will already know, but for
those who are unfamiliar:
They had three disk formats:
All of which can be done by reformatting IBM "360K" diskettes"
Single sided "Double Density" (MFM) 200K 48TPI 40 track. ISTR 10 512 byte
sectors per track, the data may have been inverted within the sectors.
Double sided "Double Density" (MFM) 400K 48TPI 40 trackper side. They
called the DSDD, "QUAD DENSITY". Everybody else in the world used "QUAD
DENSITY" to refer to DSDD 80 track per side. The head number field on
the second side had an incorrect value in it. That poses some minor
hassle with using INT13h to read them.
Double sided "Double Density" (MFM) 800K 96TPI 80 trackper side. Because
they had alread used up the name "QUAD DENSITY" to refer to DSDD 40 trak
per side, they called the "800K" format "SUPER DENSITY", which they
abbreviated "SD", which confuses the rest of the world that uses "SD"
to
refer to "SINGLE DENSITY".
In addition, the index "flash blindness" of the NEC chip sometimes poses
minor difficulties, with the short post index gap.
On Mon, 17 May 2021, Adrian Graham via cctalk wrote:
Hi Eric,
I'm in the UK so can't be much help for rehoming, but please don't send
this to the recyclers. I'm sure there'll be someone on this list who will
take it. One thing we're really short of in the Superbrain world is disk
images of the OS and applications etc so if there's a box of floppies too
then that's even more useful.
Cheers,
--
Adrian Graham
Owner of Binary Dinosaurs, the UK's biggest private home computer
collection?
t: @binarydinosaurs f: facebook.com/binarydinosaurs
w: www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk
On Mon, 17 May 2021 at 20:42, Eric Evans via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
> Classic Computer Collectors,
>
> My name is Eric and I live in Baton Rouge, LA. A customer of mine recently
> asked me to find a good home for his early 1980's Intertec Superbrain. He
> told me that it worked the last time he used it in 198? after which time it
> sat in his attic with the dust cover on it. He provided me with a number of
> 5.25" floppy disks, which he said contained the complete operating system.
>
> The chassis appears to be 100% intact, and includes the dust cover. I can
> provide a few photos if you'd like.
>
> I have not yet been able to make contact with any other classic PC
> collectors, or museums that have expressed interest. Before I send it out
> to my local recycler, I thought I'd reach out and see if anyone might be
> interested.
>
> Thank you for your time & God bless,
>
> Eric Evans
> 225homebuyers.com
> 225.242.9858 gVoice
> 316.461.8587 cell