Don, Thanks for posting these. I know that I just asked for the jumper settings but I think I'm going to need more. I want to replace some Shugart 800s in my Intel MDS with the Shugarts 851s and I've been studying the interface, wiring and S 800 setup and Intel has cobbled up a truely bizzarre setup and I think I'm going to need the whole OEM setup manual for the 851 so that I can find out where to make some of the circuit modifications. A couple of people have already promised to get me a copy. Thanks. Joe At 11:01 PM 3/1/02 -0800, you wrote:

I think what's of concern to Joe, Don, is that Intel apparently used some of the "radial" options that require the drive be jumpered specifically for those options. Nearly all drive makers supported those options, since they allowed the system to do such things such as overlap seeks, test the RDY signal on two drives separately, and the like. In the interest of improving system performance, most "major" system vendors used these features, though they were seldom used in the low-end, such as the S-100 market because they caused a huge support burden. The low-end controller/system vendors tended to recommend configurations compatible with the factory default settings provided with the most common drive, the SA800. With controllers like what Joe's using, it's unlikely the thing will work properly with an SA-800 drive with the default settings. The use of these options is certainly not "cobbled up" as the drive vendors provided an extensive repertoire of thoroughly documented options for these drives. In the case of the Shugart drives, i.e. SA-80x and SA-85x, the jumpers for corresponding options had the same designations, IIRC, though the circuitry was not always the same. If the controller manual is available, it may specify a set of jumpers for the SA-80x, which may, ultimately, work OK with the SA-85x. However, I'd want to ensure that the Intel controller has the firmware/software support for two-sided drives. It's quite possible that it does not. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Don Maslin" <donm(a)cts.com> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Saturday, March 02, 2002 10:04 PM Subject: Re: Need Shugart 851 manual Shugart for

At 09:04 PM 3/2/02 -0800, Don wrote: Oh, they've engaged in lots of 'hanky-panky'! Let me tell you about just one thing that I've found so far. I started checking the cables from the dirve controller all the way out to the drives in their external drive box and I found that each drive had a small circuit card that plugged in between the drive connector and the ribbon cable. On the circuit card is two jumpers marked S and R. Each has two positions; 0 and 1. I checked to see what they did and found that S connects to DS (Drive Select) line 1 or DS line 2 coming from the controller card BUT the common pin on the S jumper connects to BOTH DS 1 and DS 2 inputs to the drive. This is hard wired so it can't be changed. Now I wondered what they hell they were doing selecting TWO DS lines simultaniously so I started checking the drive itself. It turns out that there is a way to address up to 8 drives per system instead of the usual four and that Intel is basing their addressing on that method. What they've done is to remove all the DS jumpers on the drive and add a 74L85 (IIRC) four bit comparator IC. The four DS inputs fed the B inputs of the comparator and they use three pairs of pads (D1, D2, D4) on the drive to fed three of the A inputs. But wait, they're using four inputs on one side but only three on the other. Somethings wrong. Well the A0 input is permanently active (Low = active) and only the three upper lines are used for setting the address. Since A0 is permanently low that means that B0 also has to be low (active) to select the drive. That's why they tied DS1 to DS 2 (DS 1 goes to A0). They've also added a line from the A=B output of the comparator back to the output of the original drive select circuitry (via pad DDS) to enable the drive when the correct address is recieved. The crazy thing about this whole affair is that the drive controller can only select one DS line at a time. It is not capable of being used in a binary mode! So all of this added complication is utterly useless! If you look at the jumper listings that you send me for the 851 drives you'll find that there are no Dx or DDS pads listed so there's one big difference there and I haven't even started to look the "complicated" stuff yet! That's why I need the complete manual. I could probably remove the comparator and use the DS jumpers but there may be other things involved too and I'm trying to keep everything as original as possible. Also I found that they're using one of the "alternate I/O pins" (# 16) for something but I haven't traced it out yet. FWIW I found that the "R" jumper on the added circuit card is used to route the "Ready" signal from the drive back to the correct Ready line on the cable that goes back to the controller card. Just for a little backgraound. This is an Intel Series III model 235 MDS with the model 202 Double Density floppy drive controller added. The external drive is an Intel model 720. It holds two Shugart FH model 800 8" floppy drives. The control card can handle up to four external drives (two chassis) and has four Drive Select lines and four Ready lines but the output cable splits into two and connects to two rear panel connectors, J8 and J9, so each connector (and therefore each drive) only has two select and two ready lines. Each connector can be used to connect to one external drive chassis (two drives). Joe

At 07:58 PM 3/4/02 +0000, Tony wrote: I have that manual for both the MDS 720 drive (two drives laying horizontally and using a double density controller) and for the older MS 2DS system (two drives mounted vertically and using the single density controller) and NEITHER of them says one word about the drives! It's amazing to me that intel would go to the level of detail that they do but completely ignore the drives! J1 P1 (cable) (drive) Odd # Odd # Ground 2 46 Read Data 4 2 Not used (or even connected?) >> Not connected 6 42 Track 0 8 20 Index 10 16 Track <43 (is this really track > 43 ???) >>My docs say "< 43" also. Shugart says that pin 16 is an "alternate I/O" connector and it can be used for whatever the manufacturer decides. I've checked and it does connect back to the drive controller. So it's something else that I have to investigate. It's shown as track<43 on my schemaitc By the time it gets back the to the 'FDC Interface', it's become 'Track>43 01/' (or 'Track>43 23/' for the second drive cabinet). It's an output from the controller to the drive and seems to be the standard reduce write current signal. That's what I thought but I haven't had time to trace it all the way back to the controller yet. 12 36 Step 14 34 Direction 16 40 Write Gate >> intel calls it "write safe"! 18 38 Write Data 20 26,28 Select 0 ) Either cable pin can be jumpered to 22 26,28 Select 1 ) both drive pins by the S0/S1 jumper >> Correct. 24 4 Not used (or connected?) >> Not connected. 26 6 Not used (or connected?) >> Not connected. 28 22 Ready 0 ) Either cable pin can be jumpered to 30 22 Ready 1 ) drive pin 22 by the R0/R1 jumper cable (pin 28 or 30) 32 10 Not used (or connected?) >> Not connected. 34 12 Not used (or connected?) >> Not connected. 36 44 Write Protect 38 48 Read Data (Separated) >> Not connected at P8. 40 14 Not used (or connected?) >> Not connected. 42 50 Read Clock (Separated) >> Not connected at P8. 44 18 Not used (or connected?) >> Not connected. 46 24 Not used (or connected?) >> Not connected. 48 30 Not used (or connected?) >> Not connected. 50 32 Not used (or connected?) >> Not connected. There are no components other than connetors on the PCB in the manual. Correct. I don't think you need to worry about that. The controller seems to use a 1-of-n active low drive select scheme (2 DS lines per drive cabinet cable), so you can just link each wire to a particular drive's active DS line. That's what I thought but I suspect there may be more to these. Shugart had some odd options available like "seek without selecting a drive" and "seek without loading the head" and this may be using one of those and that may explain why they did it this way. Joe

At 11:26 PM 3/4/02 +0000, you wrote: Right. That's a MDS DDS (that's what mine is marked). The older one is a MDS-2DS. I can understand that but I'd think that they would at least give the jumper/strap/cuts needed to configure the drive for their system. Actually I preferr the old way of documentation where they gave you the OEM manufacturer's manuals. They're a lot more complete than the abbreviated versions that they usually include in the manuals. I just bought a Fluke 1722 service manual and was pleasantly surprised to find complete copy of the Ball manual for the monitor and a complete Tandon manual for the disk drive. Those alone made the package worthwhile. Agreed. Joe

I'd advise you to pursue this from the controller end, initially. If you see that a line normally not connected between the controller and drive is driven at the controller, or, just as importantly, is received in some meaningful way at the controller, then you can, perhaps, by looking at the drive manual for the SA80x type, figure out what they might have had in mind. I'd advise you to start with the head select signal, since there's an even chance they didn't even support two-sided drives. In any case, if you examine the user-installable options, of which there are several, in the 80x manual, you'll probably be able to figure out what the Intel folks had in mind with their odd connections. Once you've figured out what the desired options on the SS drive are, you look in the manuual for the 85x drives and set up the corresponding options. As I said before, however, first you need to establish whether the Intel controller even supports the two-sided drives. I don't believe I ever saw an M2FM arrangement on a two-sided drive, not that it's complicated in any way. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joe" &lt;rigdonj(a)cfl.rr.com&gt; To: &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Monday, March 04, 2002 4:08 PM Subject: Re: Need Shugart 851 manual

see below, plz. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joe" &lt;rigdonj(a)cfl.rr.com&gt; To: &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2002 6:50 AM Subject: Re: Need Shugart 851 manual Agreed ... I'm having a little trouble with that one myself ... there are only 25 pairs on the cable. What do they do with the numbers greater than 25 on one side and 50 on the other? Perhaps you'll want to give up on using th '85x's on the Intel box and use 80x's instead. There will be a cleaner path for you to follow, though, clearly, it won't be totally obvious. <snip>

What??? You mean that the controller doesn't have a normal FDD cable connector? Is it possible that there's an intermediate signal distribution board, a concept not unheard-of among Intel products, that you don't have? I'll check my old doc's just to see what I can find, but I don't remember that there was such a thing. Isn't there someone somewhere who's got one of these boards working? Perhaps they can shed light on what works and what doesn't. As Tony pointed out, 8" floppy drives expect to see a 50-conductor cable, of which the odd pins are grounded. There's a very much standardized pinout, though some makers didn't stick with it, e.g. PerSci, but, at least in that case, the differences were only a few (4) displaced signals. After all, there are only so many signals a drive and controller can reasonably use to communicate with one another. Unfortunately, this particular board doesn't seem to have adhered to that standard. Most of their later boards did use the standard pinout, so I conclude that there may have been an intermediate board, of which there would have been several versions for several different drive subsystems. It's possible that there was an external clock extraction circuit (data separator) as well, as was the case with at least one of their Multibus-1 HDC's. I'm unable to locate my Intel doc's from that era, so I can't verify what the interconnection scheme they promoted for that system was, but if it's not the "standard" FD cable, I'd say you have a bit of research to do, since this apparent lack of a drive interface specification suggests, to me, at least, that there's a physical piece of the hardware that's missing, along with the associated documentation, and that's where you're more likely to find the drive-subsystem-related information that's been so conspicuous in its absence. This also fits together with Tony's observation that most such products simply included the drive manufacturer's doc's. Since this product may not have been intended for use with a specific configuration, it wouldn't have documented that configuration, or any other artifact of the drive subsystem, since the had a product that handled that. The absence of a drive-compatible connector of any sort on the controller board explains the absence of any drive information in the document you have for the controller. I have a, much later of course, hard disk controller that uses an off-board data interface to the several sorts of drives it supports, and, not surprisingly, while the controller manual tells lots of things about the controller, it says absolutely nothing about the drive interface. That's clearly left up to the documents relating to the varous drive data interface boards they require. I'd give that controller manual a good read, just to see what, if anything, it says about the floppy drive interface board to which it is probably supposed to be wedded. There are probably several candidates. Intel was infamous for taking what would easily have worked on a single board and making two or, if they could, three, out of that function, since they could charge more for that. Intel boards often cost $25 less than a competitor's product, only to turn out to cost $2500 more once you'd bought the necessary companion products that made them useable. They liked, particularly, to do that with their own products, since you couldn't go anywhere else to buy the functions you wanted, and, you wouldn't readily give up the Intel products they supported, having invested a huge amount in the development system for Intel's. Motorola was the same way, of course, but it wasn't quite so blatant. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joe" &lt;rigdonj(a)cfl.rr.com&gt; To: &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2002 9:25 AM Subject: Re: Need Shugart 851 manual on

Tony said: Nothing is wrong with them. I want to connect up a couple more drives on my system and checkout some drives to send to someone else that's missing some. I expect I could hook up drives easily if I ignored the adapater cards and strange addressing but I'm trying to understand what intel was doing. To answer an earlier question: I think all of these use the 800-3 model drives. That's what I remember seeing in a couple of them but I haven't checked two of the boxs and it's chore to get them out of the rack and then out of the cases to read the model number. Joe

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