The IBM channel cables were separately a Bus Cable and a Tag Cable and I
believe the high data rate version had two of one of them, probably the Bus
Cable. They used an IBM proprietary hermaphroditic pin and shell which
initially we had to buy from IBM at extraordinary prices but after a while
someone, I forgot whom, came out with a plug compatible pin that avoided
IBMs patents.
The Signal Cable in the OEM HDD interface from RP01 -> SMD interface had
three tags (set head, set cylinder and control) and a bus of varying width
starting with 8 bits and growing about 1 bit/generation.
The DC cable in the same interface had separate read and write cables and a
few signals.
The names go back to the 2311 era or perhaps the 1311 era when I seem to
recall at least the DC Cable carried some DC into the drive. They had a 4th
tag, set difference which the OEMs didn't use.
Tom
Message: 20
Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2011 13:44:17 -0700
From: Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org>
Subject: Re: CMS disk drive?
To: cctalk at
classiccmp.org
Message-ID: <4DB09721.8030200 at bitsavers.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
On 4/21/11 1:20 PM, William Donzelli wrote:
These connectors are smaller than b&t, and
are a weird mix of pins,
blades,
and coax.
OK, the connectors I was thinking of were like page 1-2 of
TM114-1072-J-1M_Model_114_Tech_Oct73
The 114 calls the two cables DC (radial) and SIGNAL (BUSED). SIGNAL has
bus and tag lines and
the DC cable has the coax. They are similar to the Memorex cables with AMP
connectiors Tom
mentioned.
Weren't the cables from the CPU to Controllers "Channel" cables?