NorthStar FDC

From: Joe <rigdonj_at_intellistar.net>
Date: Thu Oct 28 12:07:08 1999

Dick,

  I have an Altair that came with a North Star MDS-A disk controller and
Shugart SA-400 5.25" disk drives. The disks are hard sectored (10
sectors). I have the manual for the MDS-A card and it does specify the
SA-400 drives. There's no mention of using any other drives, either 5.25"
or 8".

   Joe


At 09:06 AM 10/28/99 -0600, you wrote:
>I got a question the other day, and it was one about which I have no clue.
>A friend glommed onto an IMSAI box with a North Star disk subsystem, the FDC
>for which is a model MDS-A4. He wants to know about whether it is capable
>of handling 8" drives. I didn't think to ask whether it had a 50-pin cable
>header on it. That would have been too easy. My recollection is that
>NorthStar systems had a hard-sectored 5-1/4" drive, usually from Micropolis,
>attached, and that one was pretty dense, but wouldn't do CP/M-standard
>(IBM-3740 SSSD) diskettes. Is that the case with this controller?
>
>Dick
>
>
Received on Thu Oct 28 1999 - 12:07:08 BST