On Jul 19, 20:36, Chuck McManis wrote:
> I just got (from Chrislin no less!) a Chrislin Q-bus based floppy
> controller called a "Flex02".
[ ... ]
> My contact at Chrislin said it "emulates and RX02 and the indicated
jumper
> specifies 'boot rom' enabled or not enabled." Which is fine except what
he
> didn't know is whether or not the 50 pin connector expected to go
straight
> to a pair of 8" floppies or to a breakout board ala the RQDXn series.
[ ... ]
> It has a 50pin edge plug and ahead of that plug is an NEC 8255 (this is a
> parallel port so it suggests to me at least that there might be some "off
> board" intelligence required. No sign of a floppy controller chip.
The RQDX series only need a breakout board because they cram the signals
for hard drives and floppies together. This Flex02 most likely goes
straight to standard drives -- a quick check is to see if all the
odd-numbered pins (ie, everything on one row of the connector) is grounded.
If so, chances are it's a Shugart interface.
Don't be put off by the lack of a floppy controller chip. No ordinary FDC
can handle the mixture of FM and MFM usd by an RX02.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Dept. of Computer Science
University of York
Received on Tue Jul 20 1999 - 02:04:45 BST