Rodime RO200 series - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

18 Aug 2005

...
 > This is a Xebec board, no identifying marks apart
from 'Rev E04' 
...
  It's probably a Xebec S1410 board; ... Lots of
analogue circuitry
 toward the top of the board in the middle, ROM bottom-right, and
 3 40-pin ICs toward the bottom of the board in the middle. 
That's the beastie, Z80 CPU, 4K ROM and 1K RAM (2 x 2114) seem to
make up the brains of the card.

...
  These boards don't support Identify - which is
what makes plugging
 them into modern hardware in order to archive data a real pain. 
I'll have to fix up an Amiga with it's ST506/SCSI card and try that
on the drive then.

...
  If just have a J4 connector (not present on all
boards) ... 
Not present on this one.

...
  That Xebec's actually SASI not SCSI
incidentally... if the Torch
 SCSI board is operating in some kind of SASI mode then a modern
 SCSI drive might not be too happy talking to it. 
I was going to try some Seagate 20MB and 40MB drives, when I find them.

...
  SCSI command class 0, opcode 0x0C is 'initialise
drive
 characteristics' - the host needs to send this to the board with
 params in order that> the board can address the drive(s) properly. 
I presume it can do a read of whatever sector holds these parameters
first though.

...
  (the S1410 manual's on the floor here from where
I've been bodging
 a homebrew SASI controller onto a PC in order to drive one of the
 boards :) 
Isn't reading the destructions like cheating? 8^)=

Cheers,

Lee.

.

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