Cent.Mbeck%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU@mit-xx.ARPA (Mark Becker) (05/17/86)
[Pardon the wide distribution but not everyone gets both lists]
Hello Netland...
I'm the lucky recipient of *three* old Altair/Pertec hard disk
subsystems.. It looks like 5 MB removable/5 MB fixed. I have the
calibration disk and a full manual for the drives.
The MITS controllers were included and I am totally mystified by
them even though I have the manual and am of a technical bent. Would
anyone out there knowing something about this thing send me e-mail?
Thanks in Advance
Mark
For the curious - the drives are Pertec D34xx-series, top-loading
drives, using 14-inch platters. They spin at 2,400 RPM and, when
spinning, sound like a DP-center of 10-15 years ago.
-------jpm%a@LANL.ARPA (Pat McGee) (05/20/86)
I worked on one many years ago. I don't have any written information left, but I could probably remember details if you have questions. You said you were totally mystified by the controller. It has 4 buffers on the board, and when you read a sector, the data goes into the buffer. You can then get the bytes one by one from the buffer by sending read buffer commands. This is excruciatingly slow in BASIC, but assembler routines would work farily well. (they did as a matter of fact). Writes work just the opposite. You stuff data into the buffer, then command the controller to write from the buffer to the disk. I can't remember much more off the top of my head, but feel free to refer any questions to me. Pat McGee, jpm@lanl.arpa, MS: P-370, P.O. Box 1663, Los Alamos, NM 87545 Los Alamos National Labs. 505-665-0686 or FTS 855-0686