Reading ESDI disks
Al Kossow
aek at bitsavers.org
Thu Feb 11 14:47:26 CST 2021
On 2/11/21 12:31 PM, Mattis Lind via cctalk wrote:
> But then I thought, perhaps this is a more generic problem. People having
> ESDI drives (well, SMD as well I guess) that there is no controller
> available for or could be made running due to drivers or whatever. So what
> if those drives could be read anyway.
>
> Interfacewise it shouldn't be that complex. One benefit of ESDI is that the
> clock extraction has already been done, so it is mostly a question on
> finding marks calculating CRC.
>
> /Mattis
>
I have a bunch of RT drives that I need to archive, and I have the same problem.
It should be possible to disable write gate and use a generic PC ESDI controller
to position the heads, then extract the data with a logic analyzer or something
else capable of running at that data rate. If you look at the spec, there is a byte
strobe along with the clock and data.
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