19 Feb
2019
19 Feb
'19
10:24 a.m.
Hi Ali,
I'm planning on a USB controller, but I've seen ISA projects that are also
microcontroller based so I think it wouldn't be awfully difficult to
replace the USB data pipe with an ISA one.
Zooming out, I have a list of USB controllers to build:
- Kennedy 9800 tape drive
- IBM 6360 8" floppy drive
- IBM <something> 5 1/4" floppy drive
My friends think it's silly, and they're probably right. =P
On Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 1:18 PM Ali <cctalk at ibm51xx.net wrote:
Now that I have my glorious disk toaster (2D model I think, says "2D"
on
the drive levers), I want to build a controller for it. I found pinouts
and
some description of the media organization here:
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/ibm/6580_Displaywriter/S241-
6248-3_Displaywriter_6360_6580_Product_Support_Manual_Feb1983.pdf
Congratulations! Those are nice looking drives. The problem of course is
they don't work with anything "standard".
I'd like to actually store data to these
disks in the same manner the
original systems did, and I'm proficient in hardware/firmware. Has
anyone
made a controller for this already? How about emulating the filesystem?
Wow. That is going to be big endeavor.... A question what is your target
system (i.e. are you planning on implementing this on a controller
connected to a modern system w/ USB or are you planning on a nice ISA card
so these drives can be used on older systems?) I wish I could help you
technically but my background is far removed from engineering... However, I
will follow with great interest specially if you go the ISA route...
-Ali