SLSW2@cc.usu.edu (Roger Ivie) (04/29/90)
In article <29247@cup.portal.com>, Azog-Thoth@cup.portal.com (William Thomas Daugustine) writes: > Recently recived a slighty strange machine, and wanted to get some > input on it. Its not a bad machine, but a little odd, and in being > odd, may be hard to do certian things... > > First off, its called a DE-100 Disk Emulator, from Design Analysis > Associates. Theres two ports on the back: console, and remote. Both > are RS-232C. The console is at 9600 right now, and remote is 2400. HELLO! I work for Design Analysis and am very familiar with the DE100 (I helped out on certain bits of the software, most notably the Turbo Pascal interrupt service routines). I know quite a bit about the machine. The machine emulates a floppy drive and a hard drive. It is intended to be a test instrument for designing MFM data separators for those drives. I also used one of these things when I was designing a hard disk controller for an AT. It is a very handy device if your designing a controller. > On the front is where the bizzare stuff comes into play. First, its > got a 700k DSDD 3.5" disk. the front panel has a bunch of ports: > > a floppy connector (standard 5.25" not 8"), and a whole array of > LEDs that match each line on a floppy connector (track 00, select, > etc) These are output ports for the machine. You hook them up to the controller that you want to test. Remember that the machine is EMULATING A DRIVE. It generates MFM data at various data rates with programmable bit shift, jitter, etc. This data comes out of these ports. You can monitor the controller's assertion of drive selects, etc. on the LEDs. > > Then theres five other ports for hard drives (5.25"): one address > buss, and four data buss connectors, and the same LED array. These are more output ports for the machine. Except that now, the machine is emulating a hard drive rather than a floppy. > > Inside is a card cage, mounted on a hinge, with about 10 cards. > The CPU is a Z80A (or it may be an H). It's an A. > > It runs CP/M 2.2, comes up with 62k RAM, and runs ZCPR2 and ZCPR > 3.4 just fine, it even has a version of MDM and its associated > overlay. It also as a RAM drive at C: with about 189k. Also included > is the disk emulator software, which of course I have no idea how > to use! One thing, somewhere along the line I ran a program > called MEMTEST, which does some insane diags (takes 41 minutes > to complete!) It states 'STD-buss 256k'. I seem to remember > STD-buss from somewhere, but cant place it.. STD bus is a popular industrial control bus. Incidentally, the machine doesn't ship with MDM; just vanilla CP/M that autoboots the disk emulator software. It's a shame you didn't get the manual for the software. It's a nifty package (but them I'm biased...). > > Anyone? The machine was basiclly free (part of a trade deal. But > since I dont have a personal CP/M machine, its the best I got. A > Xerox 820-II is running a BBS, so I cant use that...) Design Analysis' phone number is (801)753-2212. =============================================================================== Roger Ivie 35 S 300 W Logan, Ut. 84321 (801) 752-8633 ===============================================================================