kwgst@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Filip Gieszczykiewicz) (01/30/91)
Greetings. I got some custom hard drives for peanuts. When I took them apart (a nice enclosure with a PS for 2 HH Hard drives and a fan) I found: 1 custom board (Anyone hear of 8800 buss?) - Nothing interesting. It has one 50 pin connector and out comes another 50 pin connector that hooks with (below) 1 Xebec (FAB 10427 Rev 2 [(A)MLI-6] ASSY 104526) controller board - This has a 50-pin input (will this work with my K10's ribbon cable that connects the motherboard with the WD controller?) Out comes a 34-pin drive control and 20-pin data cables (ST-506) 1 ST-406 Hard drive. Looks old - 1982ish... It's a FH 5 1/4". Now, I know that I can use the enclosure for any standard ST-506 drive (or 2 HH) but I want to know if I can perhaps connect this to any machine. Again, anyone know if the K10 BIOS (CP/M 2.2F in general) supports Xebec controllers? It seems to have the same motherboard-controller cable. Take care. P.S. I asked several questions, here, about CP/M, MBASIC, and other stuff. Does anyone want me to summarize and post? -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ If reply bounces, try "kwgst@pittvms"... no? try "fmgst@unix.cis.pitt.edu" Did you hear? Some Poles burned the Russian flag near the Soviet embassy, in Poland. :-) :-) "Nothing is impossible if you don't have to do it yourself."
cummings@primerd.Prime.COM (Kevin J. Cummings) (02/01/91)
Written by swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!unix.cis.pitt.edu!kwgst@ucsd.edu (Filip Gieszczykiewicz) in )INFO-CPM Digest V91 #22 > Greetings. I got some custom hard drives for peanuts. When > I took them apart (a nice enclosure with a PS for 2 HH > Hard drives and a fan) I found: > > 1 custom board (Anyone hear of 8800 buss?) > - Nothing interesting. It has one 50 pin connector and > out comes another 50 pin connector that hooks with (below) > > 1 Xebec (FAB 10427 Rev 2 [(A)MLI-6] ASSY 104526) controller board > - This has a 50-pin input (will this work with my K10's > ribbon cable that connects the motherboard with the WD > controller?) Out comes a 34-pin drive control and 20-pin > data cables (ST-506) > > 1 ST-406 Hard drive. Looks old - 1982ish... It's a FH 5 1/4". > > > Now, I know that I can use the enclosure for any standard > ST-506 drive (or 2 HH) but I want to know if I can perhaps > connect this to any machine. Again, anyone know if the K10 > BIOS (CP/M 2.2F in general) supports Xebec controllers? > It seems to have the same motherboard-controller cable. > > Take care. > > P.S. I asked several questions, here, about CP/M, MBASIC, and > other stuff. Does anyone want me to summarize and post? Unless I'm mistaken (Its been known to happen), the Xebec card is a SASI->ST506 disk controller. SASI was some long lost SCSI predecessor (probably not compatible with today's SCSI stuff). (I inhereted an Adaptec controller with a HD cabinet I bought second hand. The bus interface card I got with it was for a true blue IBM-PC I.) It was the popular thing to do back in the late '70's. A host to SASI interface was a real simple card, containing little more than some buffering logic. The SASI cable was usually a 50-pin ribbon cable. The SASI->ST506 controllers would work with ANY host SASI adapters, and therefore a manufacturer only had to make one real disk controller. The SASI->ST506 controllers I've seen were designed to be mounted either in a special slot in a hard disk enclosure, or as a daughter board to ONE of the disk drives logic boards. The disk controllers would control up to 2 ST506 type devices. (They usually had only 2 data cable connections). Will it work in your Kaypro? My guess is only if you can find a Kaypro->SASI interface card to produce the signals needed on the 50 pin cable, or if the Kaypro HD interface is already SASI. Sorry, I can't seem to find any specs on the SASI bus either. Anyone else? How about a Kaypro expert who knows how the Kaypro HDs work?
wilker@gauss.math.purdue.edu (Clarence Wilkerson) (02/04/91)
Some SASI devices supported parity, and some not. The 50 pin connector designations are pretty standard, except for pin 26 ?? which is used on some SCSI disks to power the terminators. I had Turbo Pascal software to execise a SASI interface on a PC, and it worked ok connected to a SCSI disk. SIMTEL20 has some samples of SASI CP/M BIOS's . Although port assignments will vary with your interface, the logic flow/command set is standard. Clarence Wilkerson
roadhog@austex (Lindsay Haisley) (02/07/91)
cummings@primerd.Prime.COM (Kevin J. Cummings) writes: > > Will it work in your Kaypro? My guess is only if you can find a > Kaypro->SASI interface card to produce the signals needed on the > 50 pin cable, or if the Kaypro HD interface is already SASI. Sorry, I > can't seem to find any specs on the SASI bus either. Anyone else? > How about a Kaypro expert who knows how the Kaypro HDs work? The Kaypro 10 does indeed use the ST506 interface. The internal card is made by Western Digital and will support up to 3 physical hard drives. The native Kaypro ROM, however, will not support but ONE hard drive, and a different ROM (such as TurboROM from Sage Microsystems East) is needed for additional hard drives, or to support more than 10 megs on a single hard drive. ST412 (standard MFM) drives work well with the K-10 disk controller. "Everything works if you let it!" --- Travis J. Redfish +++++++++++++++++++++++++++ uucp: austex!roadhog@emx.utexas.edu OR roadhog%austex.uucp@emx.utexas.edu BBS: (512) 259-1261 (Z-Node 77 - aka - Kaypro Club of Austin)