ALTAIR stuff (was Re: E-Over Pay strikes again! original Altair disk sells for... )

From: Don Maslin <donm_at_cts.com>
Date: Sat Feb 13 21:22:47 1999

On 13 Feb 1999, Eric Smith wrote:

> Don Maslin <donm_at_cts.com> wrote:
> > the 37-pin D-sub connector has pretty much (there have been exceptions) been
> > the standard for connecting external floppy drives of all sizes. Almost
> > all PC (ISA) FDCs that support external drives use it, and the Xerox 820
> > (CP/M) series used it.
>
> Do you mean that the various systems that used the 37-pin D-sub actually
> used the same pinout? I was of the impression that there was no standard
> for it (before the IBM PC created a defacto standard in 1981), so I
> assumed that the IBM, DEC, and Xerox stuff probably used entirely unrelated
> pinouts.
 
No, and I did not intend to imply that the pinouts were common. Only that
the connector hardware was pretty much standard for external floppy
drives. The Xerox 820 pinout is, in fact, rather different than the ISA
card pinout for external floppies.
                                                 - don
Received on Sat Feb 13 1999 - 21:22:47 GMT