> On Apr 13, 2022, at 11:51 AM, Tom Gardner via cctech
> wrote:
>
> There are a few others like ANSI and CalComp but they are probably not worth
> investigating.
>
They are if you’re someone who has a machine using one of these interfaces, or
e.g. the 40-pin “IMI bus”, or whatever else.
On Wed, 13 Apr 2022, Paul Koning wrote:
Indeed. Though even that is hard for the more exotic formats, if
original controllers are unavailable. How would you read, for example,
an IBM 1620 or CDC 6600 disk pack, given that the machine is hard to
find and those that exists may not have the
I'll only mention that there were ICs that could interface to both
MFM/ST506 hard drives as well as floppies (System/3 MFM).
An example would be the SMC HDC9234, "Universal Disk Controller".
Pretty cool chip for the time; has full 24 bit DMA address capability.
But different register/controller
On Wed, 13 Apr 2022, shad via cctech wrote:
The main board should include a large enough array of bidirectional
transceivers, possibly with variable voltage, to support as much interfaces as
possible, namely at least Shugart floppy, ST506 MFM/RLL, ESDI, SMD, IDE, SCSI1,
DEC DSSI, DEC
. . . and, if there is agreement to standardize the connection system for
the "personality modules", then some of the other storage systems could be
implemented, particularly including some of the tape systemmes.
'course, it would be a lot more fun, instead of the 62 pin card edge, to
go
On Wed, 13 Apr 2022, shad via cctech wrote:
The main board should include a large enough array of bidirectional
transceivers, possibly with variable voltage, to support as much
interfaces as possible, namely at least Shugart floppy, ST506 MFM/RLL,
ESDI, SMD, IDE, SCSI1, DEC DSSI, DEC
Interesting idea, there are three broad classes of HDD interfaces:
1. Dumb, that is serial data and parallel control
2. Intelligent parallel
3. Intelligent serial
IMO if you can do dumb interraces then the others follow and given today’s
technology I suspect it is feasible
I've had a similar project in the works for a while (mainly for ESDI and
SMD).
I think the main issue you're going to face is that what you need to do
for something like ESDI or SMD (or any of the bit serial interfaces) is
going to be radically different than something like IDE or SCSI. This
shad said
> Hello,
> I'm a decent collector of big iron, aka mini computers, mainly DEC and DG.
> I'm often facing common problems with storage devices, magnetic discs and
> tapes are a little prone to give headaches after years, and replacement
> drives/media in case of a severe failure are
