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

From: Allison J Parent <allisonp_at_world.std.com>
Date: Sat Feb 13 23:16:31 1999

<I'm not sure you're right about the assertion that 37 is enough. Maybe,
<but the old drives used more signals than the later ones.

At this point I'd say this. I was there and used then first products.
I even hand made cables. The oldest 5.25 floppies didn't used the full
34 pins and the 8" drives didn't either. Many of the pins in the 8" case
were used in exchange for others but the odd pins in both 8" and 5" were
all ground and you didn't have to use all of them. the latter being the
common case.

the best example of this is the DEC VT180 CP/M machine D37 on the back of
the box to a DB25 on the drives. The drives were SA400L or tandon TM-100.

<The shielded cables using the DC37 connectors certainly were more durable
<than the IDC50 types one often sees, but the cable hardware in the ALTAIR
<box certainly was the cheapest available. I doubt it was any more solid
<than the IDC types.

Believe it. The cable was hand wired and IDC in the mid '70s was really
new, expensive and not quite ready for pimetime. IDC was more an early
80s item brought to the party.

I have the small but significant advantage in that I was old enough to have
been in the engineering business over 6 years before the altair. So I got
to "be there and see there" alot. That and I bought an early Altair
and helped a few business and hardy hackers build and get theirs going.

Allison
Received on Sat Feb 13 1999 - 23:16:31 GMT