S100 hard drives and controllers

From: Richard Erlacher <edick_at_idcomm.com>
Date: Wed Nov 28 14:00:50 2001

Morrow did make a hard disk controller for S-100, though I know of no maker who
shipped drives and controller as a unit. That doesn't mean it didn't happen,
but just that I didn't encounter any. Several third-parties sold such
arrangements complete with installation software.

I had a Konan SMC-100 SMD controller and a CDC Lark drive for quite some time.
SMC, later known as XEBEC, made a model 9391 controller (too tall for some
enclosures), that supported four 5-1/4" drives. There were several makers, e.g.
XCOMP, who provided S-100 board pairs for both 8" and 5-1/4" drives, though one
set would only deal with one type, and, in fact, one drive. Most of the hard
disk applications used a host adapter and an external bridge board that talked
to the drives. I was quite partial to the Western Digital types myself, but
Shugart, Xebec and Adaptec, not to mention OMTI, DTC, and XCOMP all made bridge
boards that worked very well. Most of them used the SASI interface, though the
Western Digital types, with the exception of the WD1002-SAS, used their own
interface, which I found MUCH easier to deal with than SASI or SCSI. With the
bridge board, one generally had the option of using parallel ports in place of a
bridge-specific interface, so that was quite a popular solution.

Dick

----- Original Message -----
From: "Cini, Richard" <RCini_at_congressfinancial.com>
To: "'ClassCompList'" <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2001 11:54 AM
Subject: S100 hard drives and controllers


> Hello, all:
>
> Did Morrow make a hard disk controller? Who made controllers and
> drives (if you could afford one) for these systems.
>
> Rich
>
> ==========================
> Richard A. Cini, Jr.
> Congress Financial Corporation
> 1133 Avenue of the Americas
> 30th Floor
> New York, NY 10036
> (212) 545-4402
> (212) 840-6259 (facsimile)
>
>
Received on Wed Nov 28 2001 - 14:00:50 GMT