SCSI floppies - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

25 Dec 1998

...
 I'm quite sure that things like SPARCbooks are
normally considered to be
both laptops and workstations....

SPARCbooks had a network connector, didn't they?  The WANG only has a
RS-232C and a modem (300baud?  I never even got it working yet.)

...

Quite possible. What chips are on the interface board? Does it appear to
have enough smarts to be a scsi->floppy controller (SCSI chip, FDC chip,
CPU, RAM/EPROM probably), or is it fairly simple? Is it known that the
host interface is SCSI, or is it just a 50 pin cable (which could be a
lot of things).
 It's definitely SCSI, because when I once forgot to connect the HD
(internal), it came up with a message "SCSI controller failure at address
[0]", or something like that.  It's got a SCSI terminator on the non-used
plug on the floppy, too.

...

A 720K drive should go straight in, unless the software is totally broken
(the hardware interface is the same, apart from the drive having 80 tracks).
...
  Software?  No software driving anything on this
machine, except for the WANG
video to CGA converter and PC-emulator.  Everything else is hardware.  If it
was software-controlled, there would be absolutely no way to initialize the
system, since according to the manual, The computer came with a clean,
unformatted HD.  You would boot from the floppy, initialize the HD,
partition it, format it, then install the system software, and configure it
to what you needed.  From what it sounded like, it was the type of computer
for more experienced computer users.
--
                 -Jason Willgruber
               (roblwill(a)usaor.net)
                  ICQ#: 1730318
<http://members.tripod.com/general_1...