27 Oct
2008
27 Oct
'08
11:38 p.m.
I have a Qume DT-8 8" DS drive here which I'm trying to restore/repair
to dump a number of 8" floppies, but I lack the manual and schematic for
it, and I have no idea what the pinout for the data/power/spindle
drive/etc connectors is. It doesn't use a standard shugart connector for
data at least, its a 50-pin thing, so I'll need to make some sort of
pinout converter once I know the proper pinout. The 2 terminators are
both installed.
I do know the drive needs 5v and 24v to run, and I'm not about to power
it up without checking EVERYTHING first. I'm also missing the funny
3-pin and 6-pin molex-like connectors used to supply power to the pcb
and the spindle motor, if anyone has any spares.
--
Jonathan Gevaryahu
jgevaryahu(@t)hotmail(d0t)com
jzg22(@t)drexel(d0t)edu
27 Oct
27 Oct
11:40 p.m.
Jonathan Gevaryahu wrote:
I have a Qume DT-8 8" DS drive here which I'm
trying to restore/repair
to dump a number of 8" floppies, but I lack the manual and schematic
for it, and I have no idea what the pinout for the data/power/spindle
drive/etc connectors is. It doesn't use a standard shugart connector
for data at least, its a 50-pin thing, so I'll need to make some sort
of pinout converter once I know the proper pinout. The 2 terminators
are both installed.
I do know the drive needs 5v and 24v to run, and I'm not about to
power it up without checking EVERYTHING first. I'm also missing the
funny 3-pin and 6-pin molex-like connectors used to supply power to
the pcb and the spindle motor, if anyone has any spares.
Argh, of course. 50 pins, terminators, it must be SCSI or SASI. well,
that makes hooking it up more interesting for sure...
--
Jonathan Gevaryahu
jgevaryahu(@t)hotmail(d0t)com
jzg22(@t)drexel(d0t)edu
11:48 p.m.
On Mon, 27 Oct 2008, Jonathan Gevaryahu wrote:
Argh, of course. 50 pins, terminators, it must be SCSI
or SASI. well,
that makes hooking it up more interesting for sure...
"normal" 8" drives (with SA800 interface) that do not use 50 pins and have
provision for termination are rare.
Even the early Mitsubishi 4854 1.2M 5.25" drive had an SA800 style 50 pin
interface.
That data interface is reasonably standardized and well documented. But,
POWER connections for 8" drives were NOT standardized.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
28 Oct
28 Oct
12:57 a.m.
On Mon, 27 Oct 2008, Jonathan Gevaryahu wrote:
Argh, of course. 50 pins, terminators, it must be SCSI
or SASI. well,
that makes hooking it up more interesting for sure...
Nope, plain old SA800 floppy interface. For docs, look at the
QumeTrak842 docs on bitsavers.org. There's likely much more there
than you need (unless you're thinking about building a drive from
scratch).
Cheers,
Chuck
6:01 a.m.
On Mon, 27 Oct 2008, Jonathan Gevaryahu wrote:
I have a Qume DT-8 8" DS drive here which I'm
trying to restore/repair to
dump a number of 8" floppies, but I lack the manual and schematic for it, and
I have no idea what the pinout for the data/power/spindle drive/etc
connectors is. It doesn't use a standard shugart connector for data at least,
its a 50-pin thing, so I'll need to make some sort of pinout converter once I
know the proper pinout. The 2 terminators are both installed.
50-pin *is* the standard Shugart connector for 8" drives. It is definitely
*not* SCSI. And of course there are terminators, or least provision for
mounting them, as in each floppy drive.
Christian
3 p.m.
I have a Qume DT-8 8" DS drive here which I'm trying to restore/repair
to dump a number of 8" floppies, but I lack the manual and schematic for
it, and I have no idea what the pinout for the data/power/spindle
drive/etc connectors is. It doesn't use a standard shugart connector for
data at least, its a 50-pin thing, so I'll need to make some sort of
Eh? A 50 pin connector on an 8" drive sounds like a standard Shuagart
(SA800 type) interface to me. Why do you suspect it's anything different?
pinout converter once I know the proper pinout. The 2
terminators are
both installed.
I do know the drive needs 5v and 24v to run, and I'm not about to power
it up without checking EVERYTHING first. I'm also missing the funny
3-pin and 6-pin molex-like connectors used to supply power to the pcb
and the spindle motor, if anyone has any spares.
You should be able to find the +5V and ground pins (at least) by tracing
the connections from the 6 pin connector to the logic ICs.
The spindle motor _may_ be an AC motor, the 3 pins on that connector
being the 2 sides of a power line and gound (the latter is easy to
identify). Many of these motors, even in Europe, were 110V (and run off
an (auto)transformer over here), there are a few 230V ones around,
though. And of course the AC freqeuncy is critical, it determines the
spindle speed (in general it was possible change the motor pulley to get
the spindle speed correct at either 50 or 60Hz).
-tony
4:32 p.m.
On 28 Oct 2008 at 19:00, Tony Duell wrote:
You should be able to find the +5V and ground pins (at
least) by tracing
the connections from the 6 pin connector to the logic ICs.
The QT-8/842 even uses the same power connector as an SA-800 (i.e. 6
pin locking). And the motor is indeed AC. I have QT-8's with both
120v 60Hz and 220v 50Hz motors--and a pulley to convert the 50Hz
motor to spin the drive at 360 RPM.
Generally, the QT-8 is a drop-in for the SA-800 drives. It mostly
has the same jumpers, including HS and 8/16/32 sector selection as
well as the same bezel configuration.
Bitsavers has all of the appropriate poop.
About the only problem I've ever had with mine is the tendency for
the head support springs to hang up, thereby making contact with the
media impossible. Fortunately, it's easy to correct--just nudge the
head laterally within its supports.
All in all, a good drive; better than most 8" drives and a darned
sight better than the Qumetrak 5.25" models.
Cheers,
Chuck
7:23 p.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
The QT-8/842 even uses the same power connector as an
SA-800 (i.e. 6
pin locking). And the motor is indeed AC. I have QT-8's with both
120v 60Hz and 220v 50Hz motors--and a pulley to convert the 50Hz
motor to spin the drive at 360 RPM.
Generally, the QT-8 is a drop-in for the SA-800 drives.
It mostly
has the same jumpers, including HS and 8/16/32 sector selection as
well as the same bezel configuration.
---
Is there a difference between a QT-8 and (what the original poster asked
about) the DT-8? I know that the DT-8 was a double-sided,
double-density drive. The DT-8 (DataTrak-8) did have a spindle motor
that ran on Mains AC. Back in the long ago days, I designed a floppy
controller that worked with DT-8's (using an LSI controller chip and a
custom data separator circuit). It was used in a proprietary bus
structure system, that ran with Motorola 6809 CPU. I wrote drivers for
FLEX and OS-9. They were nice, fast drives, as floppy drives go. As I
recall (and this might be incorrect), they were "half height" (as
compared to an SA-800) drives.
Rick Bensene
http://oldcalculatormuseum.com
7:53 p.m.
On 28 Oct 2008 at 16:23, Rick Bensene wrote:
Is there a difference between a QT-8 and (what the
original poster asked
about) the DT-8? I know that the DT-8 was a double-sided,
double-density drive.
The Bitsavers docs for the 842 identifies the 842 as the "Datatrak
8":
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/qume/30006_QumeTrak842pd_Apr79.pdf
My own drives are labeled as "QumeTrak 842", but match the (full-
height) drives described in the aforementioned (DT-8) document
perfectly. It could be that Qume models had a name change sometime
around 1980 or so.
The QumeTrak 242 is the half-height 8", but I don't believe it was
ever referred to as a "DataTrak 8". It used a DC spindle motor and
did not have native hard-sector (i.e. sector output and 32/16/8
sector selection; also, no optional on-board FM data separator.) As
far as built-like-a-battleship-ness goes, a poor relative to its full-
height 842 cousin. But if the OP has the 242, there's a document for
it also on bitsavers.
Cheers,
Chuck
5780
days inactive
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-
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
cc＠informatik.uni-stuttgart.de -
cclist＠sydex.com -
cisin＠xenosoft.com -
jzg22＠drexel.edu -
rickb＠bensene.com