My limited experience with XEBEC has been that the majority of their products
were interfaced via SASI rather than by SCSI.
Since I've seen and handled a couple of these SIDER boxes, having acquired one
for purposes of using the box and PSU, and having sent Rich the drive he's
trying to figure out, I know what the cabling arrangements in at least one of
them were. The interconnection is done via a DC37 connector at the rear of the
rather long, narrow, tall box, to provide for a daisy chain or a terminator
plug. The cable seems to utilize all 37 conductors, though it does so in an
arrangement different from the way in which the signals are arranged on the
37-to-50 conductor adapters used by IOMEGA in their Bernoulli Box devices.
Unfortunately, I've no knowledge of what the Apple][ adapter to this interface
looks like, never having seen one myself.
I'm convinced at this point that the cables useable with the IOMEGA type of
device will work with the SIDER, but I doubt the terminator will work.
Bernoulli Boxes were internally terminated, while the SIDER was not. That's
easily remedied, however, since an adapter from the 37-pin arrangement to a
standard 50-pin SCSI would be easily built.
There are numerous versions of a [DB-25]<=>[SCSI 50-conductor] adapter so it's
possible that even a 25-pin to 37-pin cable could be used. It will probably
have to be made up for this purpose, however. I do not believe that XEBEC made
a 25-pin version of this baby.
I recently saw an Apple][ board with a 40-conductor ribbon cable connector on
it, and that might have been a way of attaching to a DC37, but I didn't think to
look more carefully at that board.
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: "George Leo Rachor Jr." <george_at_racsys.rt.rain.com>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 15, 2001 12:27 PM
Subject: Re: Xebec Sider for Apple II
> There were at least 2 versions of Sider drives/Cards...
>
> One was a straight ribbon cable... The other looked like a standard SCSI
> cable but I don't remember if it was a real scsi interface or not...
>
> George Rachor
>
> =========================================================
> George L. Rachor Jr. george_at_rachors.com
> Hillsboro, Oregon http://rachors.com
> United States of America Amateur Radio : KD7DCX
>
> On Thu, 15 Nov 2001, Pete Turnbull wrote:
>
> > On Nov 15, 8:33, Ernest wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > > -----Original Message-----
> > > > From: owner-classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org
> > > > [mailto:owner-classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org]On Behalf Of Pete Turnbull
> > >
> > > > What would it look like? I assume it would have a ribbon
> > > > connector between
> > > > the Apple card and the Sider. Do you know how many pins? I don't
> > think
> > > > the card I have is what you want, but you never know...
> > >
> > > It has a Xebec label on the card, and a wide rainbow ribbon cable comming
> > > directly off the tail end of the card.
> >
> > Yeah, but how wide is "wide"?
> >
> > The card I have seems not to be what's required. It's intended to connect
> > to a Xebec card all right, but the connector is only 26-way. Thanks to
> > Dick Erlacher who mailed me with the details, I know the Sider needs rather
> > more wires (all 50, probably).
> >
> > My card was made by HAL Computers Ltd in 1983, labelled "APPLE 2/3 XEBEC
> > INTERFACE REV 1", and the only strings I can find in the EPROM are "(C) HAL
> > COMPUTERS LTD 1983 A/XHAL SHARED RESOURCE WINCHESTER SYSTEM", "NOT
> > CONNECTED", and "SRS ERROR". If anybody knows any more about this, I'd be
> > interested to hear about it, otherwise it will languish in my box of odd
> > cards for a day when I'm particularly bored and decide to try it out (yes,
> > I have a spare Xebec controller and ST412 drives).
> >
> > --
> > Pete Peter Turnbull
> > Network Manager
> > University of York
> >
>
>
Received on Thu Nov 15 2001 - 15:21:41 GMT