HD Controllers - S-100 & Corvus Omninet

From: Richard Erlacher <edick_at_idcomm.com>
Date: Sat Dec 1 11:28:45 2001

I had a couple of IMI drives back in the '80's and find, from my doc's that they
were, in fact, ST506 compatible. I wonder if the drives you're seeing in your
brocheure are earlier than that.

The 8" Quantum drives all provided a clock on the data cable, that could be used
to recover data. I'm not exactly sure how this was intended to be used, but
several controllers for 8" drives relied on it, not having a PLL on board. The
Shugart drives apparently didn't provide this clock.

Dick

----- Original Message -----
From: "Frank McConnell" <fmc_at_reanimators.org>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2001 1:08 AM
Subject: Re: HD Controllers - S-100 & Corvus Omninet


> M H Stein <mhstein_at_usa.net> wrote:
> > Does anybody know anything about the HD interface bus Cromemco used
> > with their early IMI drives (7012 - 8" with transparent cover, 5007,
> > 5018 & 5021 5 1/2") and the WDI/WDI-II controllers? I'm just curious
> > if the same interface was used in any other systems (single 34 pin
> > header, 7 units max, differential servo clock supplied by drive, so
> > it doesn't look like SA1000).
>
> Yes, Corvus used these drives. I'd expect Onyx did too; the story is
> that the VC who funded IMI also funded Onyx and Corvus so that IMI
> would have customers. It's interesting to know that Cromemco used
> them too.
>
> I'm sitting here looking at a photocopy of a data sheet of sorts for
> the IMI 7710, and it does provide some description of the interface.
> 25 signals on a 34-line bus. I suspect it's somewhere between "more
> than I want to type" and "less than you need to know to use the
> drive", because I can't quite figure out how you would transfer a
> block of data to the drive from what's printed here.
>
> > Interesting aside: when Cromemco finally went the ST506 route with the
> > STDC controller, they made a replacement HD board available to convert the
> > IMI 5 1/2" drives to a standard ST506 interface.
>
> Neat!
>
> > Finally, I also have a Corvus S-100 board; looks like it might be a
> > host adapter for a disk drive of some sort. Only markings are
> > Corvus S-100, 8008 REV K, copyright 1980; 11 TTL chips & a 34 pin
> > header. Anybody know what it is and/or want it?
>
> Yes, that's the Corvus hard disk interface for S-100, p/n
> 8010-08008-00. I could be interested in it.
>
> -Frank McConnell
>
>
Received on Sat Dec 01 2001 - 11:28:45 GMT