22 Sep
2012
22 Sep
'12
11:33 a.m.
I would guess
it's QIC36, which is a low-level 'unformatted'
interface. I have seen simialr QIC 36 boards for the ISA bus, A
micorprocessor or microcotnroller , EPROM, 2K or 8K of SRAM, a custom
40 pin tape data control IC and glue logic. Often internally they are
built as ISA-QIC02 and QIC02-QIC36 interfaces on the same board. In
fact I ahve a QIC02 to QIC36 interfce here that usese the same custom
IC as a common ISA QIC36 controller (guess where I get spares from
:-)).
I don't know, Tony. I've got a couple of QIC36 boards; two are
Wangtek QIC36-to-ISA, the other is a Wangtek QIC36-to-QIC02
converter. Both have a substantial number of chips, including an MPU (8085 in all cases) as well as some analog circuitry
for what I
suspect is a data separator, SRAM and ROM. That seems to me to be a
bit beyond the capabilities of an 8035 MCU.
The Archive Sidewidner (an wear QIC drive, with an 8" floppy drive form
factor) was a QIC 36 unti with a QIC-02-QIC36 interface tagged onto it.
IRIC< there's an 8048 i nthe drive and another one in the controller. But
that controller has a lot of otehr chips (including a PLL as a data
separator IIRC). It's actually 2 PCBs, each about the size of an SA800
logic board.
So, yes, I so agree that doing a QIC-02-QIC36 converter in an 8035 with
not tht much more is possible impossible.
I do wonder why you would need a micorcontorller, RAM, etc on a QIC-02
card, though. the QIC-02 interfaces I've come across (for the PERQ, for
ISA, etc) are just a few simple logic chisp. Maybe a PAL fdor address
decoding.
I wonder if this card does some kind of data buffering. That could use a
microcontroller.
-tony