4 May
2005
4 May
'05
2:21 p.m.
ESDI was common in high-performance machines and for
"large" drives
- 120MB was about the smallest I saw (when 20MB - 40MB was still
common) and ~330MB was typical. I have heard of ~600MB units but
never installed one.
I think I handled a 600 in a Novell server once.
It's an Int11 device, just like an ST-506 drive.
The BIOS needs
to be configured with the right number of heads, cylinders and
sectors-per-track, tho' picking type 20 or so will usually give you
enough to boot and read the true settings off the drive itself. They
will probably need to be low-level formatted if moving them from
one controller to another. DEBUG and then G=c800:5 is what I dimly
recall for this, tho' in later years I used CheckIt or even SpinRite
to do this.
I'm inclined to disagree, though I'm hardly the expert.
Specifically, I recall having trouble setting up several ESDI drives
in servers. The fix was to tell the machine BIOS the disk didn't
exist, then let the ESDI controller BIOS work out geometry.
I think on some ESDI controllers, the C800:5 trick did work, though.
That was a common disk interface, MFM, ESDI etc.
De
5 May
5 May
9:33 a.m.
On 5/4/05, Dennis Boone <drb at msu.edu> wrote:
Oh really? Odd. I recall doing that for SCSI but not for ESDI - I'm
pretty sure I needed to tell the BIOS there was /some/ drive there,
and at least a 20MB to be reasonably sure of getting all of track 0
and the partition table and so on without splitting that track over
several nonexistent cylinders. Mind you, whether my dim recollection
of type 20 being true is anybody's guess, it's so long ago now. This
entire bit could be false memory syndrome. :?)
--
Liam Proven
Home: http://welcome.to/liamsweb * Blog: http://lproven.livejournal.com
AOL, Yahoo UK: liamproven * ICQ: 73187508 * MSN: lproven at hotmail.com
I think I handled a 600 in a Novell server once.
Oooh! [Envy] ;?)
It's an
Int11 device, just like an ST-506 drive. The BIOS needs
to be configured with the right number of heads, cylinders and
sectors-per-track, tho' picking type 20 or so will usually give you
enough to boot and read the true settings off the drive itself. They
will probably need to be low-level formatted if moving them from
one controller to another. DEBUG and then G=c800:5 is what I dimly
recall for this, tho' in later years I used CheckIt or even SpinRite
to do this.
I'm inclined to disagree, though I'm hardly the expert.
Specifically, I recall having trouble setting up several ESDI drives
in servers. The fix was to tell the machine BIOS the disk didn't
exist, then let the ESDI controller BIOS work out geometry. 
7:57 p.m.
[ESDI drives]
I think I handled a 600 in a Novell server once.
In the early 90's, I was a huge fan of ESDI drives. The largest
I ever dealt with were 1.3 Gig Hitachi's.
The larger-capacity drives generally had higher data rates and most
WD-based PC-clone controllers couldn't handle them. I think the largest
were targetted towards ESDI-based RAID arrays. They were built like
Bentley's - solid!
The ESDI interface was sort-of like a slightly scaled down SMD interface.
The drives did seek counting, and there were medium-level commands that
the controller could send to a drive.
Tim.
8:45 p.m.
On 5/6/05, shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com
<shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com> wrote:
In the early 90's, I was a huge fan of ESDI
drives. The largest
I ever dealt with were 1.3 Gig Hitachi's.
/Wow!/
The larger-capacity drives generally had higher data
rates and most
WD-based PC-clone controllers couldn't handle them. I think the largest
were targetted towards ESDI-based RAID arrays. They were built like
Bentley's - solid!
Oh, absolutely.
The ESDI interface was sort-of like a slightly scaled
down SMD interface.
SMD?
--
Liam Proven
Home: http://welcome.to/liamsweb * Blog: http://lproven.livejournal.com
AOL, Yahoo UK: liamproven * ICQ: 73187508 * MSN: lproven at hotmail.com
6 May
6 May
4:10 a.m.
New subject: SMD (was Re: All things ESDI)
On 5/5/05, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
SMD was another drive interface of 20-something years ago.... rather
than a 34-pin digital controller cable and a 20-pin analog
one-per-drive cable, it used a 60-pin digital cable and a 26-pin
one-per-drive analog cable. Among the more famous SMD devices in DEC
world were the CDC 9762, 9766, and Fujitsu Eagle and Super Eagle. SMD
drives were routinely in the 14" to 8" range, going from dozens to
hundreds of megabytes, with some later ones in the 5.25" size. I do
not know if all of the 5.25" devices were SMD-E or not (newer version
of the interface for faster drives). Perhaps someone could chime in
about that.
ISTR there were Qbus controllers for SMD-E as well as SMD. DEC didn't
officially support SMD (there were some SMD-like interfaces embedded
in some of DECs drive lines like the RB80 or the RM03, but they
weren't entirely compatible with true SMD, and they weren't meant to
be fiddled with by the end users), but there _were_ 3rd party true SMD
disk controllers by Emulex, Dilog, and others. I have a few Systems
Industries SI9900s that were SMD to the drives, and proprietary SI
interface to an SI host card for Qbus or Massbus (perhaps Unibus, too;
but I've never seen that interface). While they aren't the only
drives in town, I have yet to see an S9900 that does not have a Fuji
Eagle attached. They used to be a good value and quite robust (and
around 400MB!)
SMD drives were uncommon for PC-class hardware, but were quite common
for minicomputers, especially in the PDP-11 and VAX worlds where
people didn't want to pay DEC's prices for DEC's disks.
-ethan
The ESDI
interface was sort-of like a slightly scaled down SMD interface.
SMD? 
8:11 a.m.
New subject: SMD (was Re: All things ESDI)
On Fri, 06 May 2005 10:10:38 +0200, Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com>
wrote:
On 5/5/05, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com>
wrote:
SMD was another drive interface of 20-something years ago
I think we used SMD-drives on our kongsberg SM-4 and KS-500 minicomputers
as early as 1976, but I am not quite certain. The drives in question were
top-loaders with 5-disk Memorex diskpacks. Stored something like 40MB.
...
The ESDI
interface was sort-of like a slightly scaled down SMD
interface.
SMD?
SMD drives were uncommon for PC-class hardware, but were quite common
for minicomputers, especially in the PDP-11 and VAX worlds where
people didn't want to pay DEC's prices for DEC's disks.
I have a couple of Nestar fileservers with 120MB Priam 14" drives. That is
probably as close as you get to PCs using SMD - the diskless PCs booted
off the fileserver.
Does anybody know the bus specs for the Nestar servers? They were not
willing to give out any detailed hardware information, and their software
developer kit was way too expensive. The operating system was Merlin (not
the OS/2 version, this was mid-1980's, something vaguely Unix-like on the
surface of it) running on a 6800 processor.
--
Bj?rn
8:28 a.m.
New subject: SMD (was Re: All things ESDI)
On 5/6/05, Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote:
SMD was another drive interface of 20-something years
ago....
SMD drives were uncommon for PC-class hardware, but
were quite common
for minicomputers, especially in the PDP-11 and VAX worlds where
people didn't want to pay DEC's prices for DEC's disks.
OIC. TFTI! That explains why I'd not met them, then - I went straight
from 1980s 8-bit home micros to Macs & x86 PCs.
Aside from a little
fiddling with Amigas, STs, QLs & Acorn RISC machines, plus
the odd
Sun, I know little of any earlier hardware. I can drive a VAX but not
build one. :?(
--
Liam Proven
Home: http://welcome.to/liamsweb * Blog: http://lproven.livejournal.com
AOL, Yahoo UK: liamproven * ICQ: 73187508 * MSN: lproven at hotmail.com
2:50 p.m.
New subject: SMD (was Re: All things ESDI)
On Fri, 6 May 2005, Ethan Dicks wrote:
SMD drives were uncommon for PC-class hardware, but
were quite common
for minicomputers, especially in the PDP-11 and VAX worlds where
people didn't want to pay DEC's prices for DEC's disks.
I ran two different SMD drives and two different SMD controllers
in the S100 world, both CP/M-80 and PDOS. 1979 - 1982 or so.
Both the Konan two-board controller and some clever thing with a
serial hardware state machine, single board. I could look it up, I
still have the source to the driver printed out. Name had an X in
it.
Drives were some rack mount boat-anchor Fujitsu monstrosity (14"?)
that never really worked right, and a BASF 6172 (8", voicecoil, 3
heads) spectaculary fast and spectacularly unreliable POS. The 4th
surface was servo, it would get lost, the drive would go
"wooooOOOOOP KLUNK" and you had to power it down and restart. Ugh.
I always pictured the problem as the track register wrappign
around and seeking to track fffffff instead of 0. Man I spent a
lot of time on that drive with a scope.
The x-named controller had some internal statemachine that you had
to squirt microcode to; the microcode was provided as a printed
table of bytes, unique to the drive, and provided by the
manufacturer. If I recall the interface was peculiar but it
worked. Programmed IO (INIR, Z80) I think; less performance, but
reliable.
The Konan was DMA, and you had to adjust buss timing on the CPU,
memory, and Konan and it wasn't really possible to get all three
reliably compatible all the time. That Konan controller had more
jumpers than any other computer board I ever used!
7 May
7 May
7:44 a.m.
New subject: SMD (was Re: All things ESDI)
shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com wrote:
Yup. I've got 2. They still work. And fun to watch :-)
-brad
rack mount
boat-anchor Fujitsu montrosity (14"?)
See-through smoked grey cover? Then it was probably of the 2284
series. While not as good reliability-wise as the Eagle or the
8" Fujitsu SMD's, they weren't bad.
6 May
6 May
8:49 p.m.
New subject: SMD (was Re: All things ESDI)
SMD drives [...] going from dozens to hundreds of
megabytes
The largest I met were 8" Fujitsus that were in the 2 Gbyte range.
If we want to get into the "drive interfaces that were the next big
thing but never quite caught on in the wide world", we can start
talking IPI :-). I've seen VME and TurboChannel IPI interface boards.
We may still have some dead IPI drives in a chassis at work...
IPI cabling looks a lot like SCSI cabling but that's about all I can
say about the interface standard.
Tim.
9:31 p.m.
New subject: SMD (was Re: All things ESDI)
If we want to get into the "drive interfaces that
were the next big
thing but never quite caught on in the wide world", we can start
talking IPI :-).
Oh, that brings back memories.
Back when our SPARCserver 470s were new, I think we had IPI disk on
them.
IPI cabling looks a lot like SCSI cabling but
that's about all I can
say about the interface standard.
Well, a lot like Sun SCSI cabling of the time, in that it used DD-50
connectors. But the cables were DD50M on one end and DD50F on the
other, unlike the SCSI DD50M on each end. Similarly, each drive had a
DD50F and a DD50M, instead of the SCSI way of 2xDD50F on drives. I
remember noticing this specifically because it was the only obvious
difference between the IPI cables and short SCSI cables.
/~\ The ASCII der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca
/ \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
11:08 p.m.
New subject: SMD (was Re: All things ESDI)
On Fri, 6 May 2005, der Mouse wrote:
Well, a lot like Sun SCSI cabling of the time, in that
it used DD-50
connectors. But the cables were DD50M on one end and DD50F on the
other, unlike the SCSI DD50M on each end. Similarly, each drive had a
DD50F and a DD50M, instead of the SCSI way of 2xDD50F on drives. I
remember noticing this specifically because it was the only obvious
difference between the IPI cables and short SCSI cables.
Oh, now I know what those weird cables are that I have bunches of ;)
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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7 May
7 May
8:56 a.m.
New subject: SMD (was Re: All things ESDI)
[Microcomputers that support/didn't support SMD
drives]
The IMSAI sales brochures circa 1977 promised a S-100 controller for
what was obviously one of the larger CDC SMD removable pack drives.
Ah, here's the quote, August 1976 color sales brochure:
Disk Drives: Disk-50, Disk-80, Disk-200
You can sp;ecify 3330-type disk drives with 50, 80, or 200-megabyte
capacities. Each drive is supplied with Disk Drive Interface HDIF.
Please Contact the factory for additional information.
<End quote>
Was the HDIF purely vaporware, or was it a real shipped item?
200 Megabytes would be a lot in the mid-70's, even for a minicomputer
system!
Tim.
3:42 p.m.
New subject: SMD (was Re: All things ESDI)
shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com declared on Saturday 07 May 2005
07:56 am:
3330-type disk drives
I saw this in the technical manual for the Century Data disk drives I
posted on here about a few weeks ago.
Are they referring to IBM 3330 type drives? That was my first guess, but
I couldn't decide if that's what they meant, or if there was something
else that they were referring to, since it didn't say "IBM 3330" just
"3330".
Pat
--
Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/
The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org
5:35 p.m.
New subject: SMD (was Re: All things ESDI)
> 3330-type disk drives
I saw this in the technical manual for the Century
Data disk drives
I posted on here about a few weeks ago. Are they referring to IBM
3330 type drives?
In this context I think it means "removable pack drive". And I'm
99% certain they are referring to the CDC SMD removable pack
drives (9762, 9766, etc.)
I believe that Memorex sold a SMD removable pack drive whose model
number was 3330, too. Maybe it was media compatible with the IBM
of the same number.
I'm not sure where (it's *not* the Aug 1976 glossy) but I think
I've seen a picture of a IMSAI next to a CDC 9762, with the
implication that they were connected. Don't know if that was an
IMSAI ad or not.
Tim.
(After 30 years I still think it was probably vaporware... Of course
there were non-SMD hard drives (SA4000 style) that were succesfully
interfaced to S-100 stuff.)
8:13 p.m.
New subject: SMD (was Re: All things ESDI)
On Sat, 7 May 2005 shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com wrote:
I'm not sure where (it's *not* the Aug 1976
glossy) but I think
I've seen a picture of a IMSAI next to a CDC 9762, with the
implication that they were connected. Don't know if that was an
IMSAI ad or not.
Tim.
(After 30 years I still think it was probably vaporware... Of course
there were non-SMD hard drives (SA4000 style) that were succesfully
interfaced to S-100 stuff.)
I seem to recall reading in _Once Upon a Time in Computerland_ that they
were trying to develop a hard drive interface with limited success.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
[ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ]
[ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]
8:31 p.m.
New subject: Paging... Wayne Smith
Does anyone have a current email address for Wayne Smith? I've been trying
a few, but I think I may have some out-of-date ones...
-- Tony
11 p.m.
New subject: SMD (was Re: All things ESDI)
Sellam wrote:
I seem to recall reading in _Once Upon a Time in
Computerland_ that they
were trying to develop a hard drive interface with limited success.
For anyone that is interested in the history of microcomputers, that
book is a MUST READ! I had no idea when I got it at a used bookstore
just how amazing the story would be.
Eric
6 May
6 May
4:01 a.m.
On 5/5/05, shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com
<shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com> wrote:
I have a pair of 1.2GB ESDI drives attached to an ESDI<->SDI board
that's presently hooked to my VAX 8300. Much lighter and much less
power hungry than five or six RA81s. :-)
-ethan
[ESDI drives]
I think I handled a 600 in a Novell server once.
In the early 90's, I was a huge fan of ESDI drives. The largest
I ever dealt with were 1.3 Gig Hitachi's.
The larger-capacity drives generally had higher data rates and most
WD-based PC-clone controllers couldn't handle them. I think the largest
were targetted towards ESDI-based RAID arrays. They were built like
Bentley's - solid!
7017
days inactive
7019
days old
19 comments
12 participants
participants (12)
-
brad＠heeltoe.com -
bv＠norbionics.com -
drb＠msu.edu -
eric＠brouhaha.com -
ethan.dicks＠gmail.com -
lproven＠gmail.com -
mouse＠Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA -
pat＠computer-refuge.org -
shoppa_classiccmp＠trailing-edge.com -
tomj＠wps.com -
tony.eros＠machm.org -
vcf＠siconic.com