On 26 Mar 2003, Jim Donoghue wrote:
I have several 5 1/4" *hard-sectored* floppy
disks. These are in some
proprietary format, they are read by a controller that consists of a Z80
CPU, an EPROM, and some TTL chips. All this thing does is read the
entire contents of the disk, outputting the data in parallel format over
a ribbon cable. This is used to load CPU microcode into static RAMS.
I want to be able to read the data from the disks, as I no longer have
the controller/drive (or the mainframe it came from.)
Any ideas?
Is there a brand name? (Somebody else might HAVE one)
Otherwise,the drive is almost certainly not a problem, and you can
probably use an "industry standard" drive, such as a TM100-2.
But you will need a controller that can handle hard sectored diskettes.
Depending on the specs of the format (which you haven't tod us), it MIGHT
be readable with Northstar hardware, or it MIGHT be readable with Vector
Graphic hardware, etc.
OR, you could build an appropriate controller for a PC.
--
Fred Cisin cisin(a)xenosoft.com
XenoSoft
http://www.xenosoft.com