Actually, having re-read the HP CE manuals on hpmuseum.net, I think I was mistaken. All 9153s and 9154s used the Nighthawk drive. It's the one part that's common to them (the PSU, controller board and floppy drive did change). I have a later one, a 9154B. The controller board in that has a large ASIC that cotnains the floppy and hard disk cotnrollers, etc. The -A models have larger controller board stuffed with chips, inclduing a couple of Adaptec chips for the hard disk controller. The Nighthawk is a curious drive. It uses a stepper motor for positioning, but it microsteps it (there's a dual DAC on one of the drive PCBs with an ADC for postion feedback). The interface is raw data to/from the reaad/write chain (clock separation, ID location, etc is done on the controller board, not the drive) but with an 8 bit data bus and strobes to read th ADC, write to the DAC, etc. I haev some detials, but not enough to make a replacement drive. The Nighthawk was used in some models of Vectra from what I've read. I beleive you could reformat a Vectra drive to use in a 9153/4 but not the reverse. -tony

On Fri, 5 Feb 2010, Tony Duell wrote: Sounds like the "standard" 20 MB HP drive as found in Vectra PCs and measurement equipment. I once had to replace the hard disk in a HP4972 network analyser and took one from a Vectra. The controller board for the Vectra (standard 8-bit full-length ISA card) has an onboard MC6809, on-board sector buffer, a BIOS etc. It's quite an intelligent card from the programmer's point of view (I've partially disassembled the BIOS), but lack further information. Would be nice to write a Linux driver for that board ;-) Christian

09153-96111 is the HP product number for the 10MB Winchester. -Rik

I don;t think there ever were any technical manual for this drive :-(. Or at leasrt I've never seen one. There were never official schematics to my knowledge either .I have unofficial schematics, but they won't help you that much. It would be a lot less work to track down an HP9133 of some flavour. It would probaably be less work to recreate an HP9133... THe Nighthawk drive interface is strange. Very strange. it has the raw data signals of an ST412 drive (but on single-ended TTL lines, not differential pairs). It also hasa the strangest positioner interface you're likely to see. The positioner is a 2-winding stepper motor. You get (at the drive interface) to contrtoll the currents through the windings (there's a dual DAC in the drive).You also get soem kind of position feedback signal from the drive (there's an ADC in there too). There is no intellegence in the drive to control te DACs based on the output from the ADC, that is done in the controller (I assume in part by the 6809 firmware). Given there's an undocumented ASIC in the drive too, which has a register accessible over the interface, and for whaich I have no data, tryign to recreate the drive is going to be a big job. -tony

It mioght well be less work. And, BTW, if you get a SS/80, CS/80 or Amigo flahs-memory storage device working, I want one :-). Actually, I want several... I would look out for the drive, they must turn up sometimes. I have exactly one, alas, in a 9154B. But I can't believe that's the only one still around. As I said, I'd also look out for an HP9133 of some flavour. They use stndard ST412-interface hard drives. Or something like a 7959B, which IIRC uses an ESDI drive internally. -tony

It is. They came in 1)BM and 20MB versions I beleive. That sounds very like a 9153/4 controllr, The board in my 9154B cotnaisn a 68B09, a Medusa HPIB chip, a large HP ASIC (disk controllers and glue logic) ROM and RAM. What is the disk controller on the Vectra board? Hp wouldn't have beeb so insane as to have haev the 6809/controller system respond to SS/80 commands from the PC, would they? It would make sort-of sense... -tony

On Sat, 6 Feb 2010, Rik Bos wrote: The "classic" Vectra of course. We had *many* of those years ago at the computer sience department, bought around 1986 so that the people could work on their "own personal computer" instead of sharing one big and slow one (there was a VAX11/780 and 11/750 at that time). I've made some pictures of a) the ISA controller card and b) the disk drive that goes with it. The controller part number is 5061-2826, the drive sled including the drives 45816A, and the HDA's number is 97500-85620. The sled contains two drives for a total capacity of 2x20 MB. I think the transfer rate is 4 Mbit/s; there's an 8 MHz quarz oscillator on it. Christian

Ahh, Christian thanks for 'the enlightment'. The ones I saw at that time always where equiped with a ST225 or ST255. I worked from medio '86 to '89 for a HP-dealer but never seen these and we sold a lot of Vectra's in those days, so may be they weren't available in the Netherlands. -Rik