20 Jul
2004
20 Jul
'04
12:29 p.m.
On Mon, 2004-07-19 at 10:14, Barry Watzman wrote:
I'm trying to find this and get it converted to
PDF files. Bob Stek has
loaned me volume 9 to scan (covers the Helios Disk System), which will soon
be on Howard's site (http://www.hartetechnologies.com/manuals/).
I met the guy who did the Helios floppy disk file, years ago. His shop
built the power supplies for a computer I worked on, sold by CSSN,
Inc/Boston Mass around 79/80. (It was presented at the very first Comdex
in NV, in classic style -- up all night making it go (konan disk
controller DMA timing conflicts with memory and CPU...) big box on a
table, behind the skirt on the floor a huge-ass power supply because the
real one wasn't ready yet.)
I forget his name, but he claimed IBM stole the design from him. I
cannot comment on the veracity of his claim of course. The helios drive
I did see had a big knob on the front that selected the track to
read/write. Wish I had one of those now!
The shop was in a declining area of Boston's Back Bay, coincidentally a
few years later I moved into a Back Bay apartment that was next door to
one of Philbrick Researches' buildings, 285 Columbus Ave.