new find: an Intel MDS 800

From: Dwight K. Elvey <dwight.elvey_at_amd.com>
Date: Mon Nov 1 10:25:31 2004

Hi
 I knew one of the fellows that wrote the 3000 code for
the double density controller. A fellow named Lou Bolardo.
 It always astounded me that it took 2 boards to do a disk
controller. I guess when one is selling the systems at
$10K+ it didn't make too much difference as to how much
space one used.
Dwight


>From: "Steve Thatcher" <melamy_at_earthlink.net>
>
>the very first MDS800 I worked on in 1977 was SD based and used ISIS (not
>ISIS-II). In fact, I even had the paper tape reader and punch to go with
>it. Company is long gone of course, but my memory lingers on.
>
>When I spoke about the 8271, I was talking about the IOC board in the
>series II and was not talking about the MDS800 because it had no internal
>boards other than the bus board all the carded plugged into. The 8271 was
>not introduced until 1977 when the Series II was released. The MDS800 was
>released in 1975.
>
>Their decision was based on available technology...
>
>At 12:40 PM 10/30/2004, you wrote:
>>At 11:48 AM 10/30/04 -0400, you wrote:
>> >I thought that the SD controller board set was also bit slice (the series
>>II internal was of course 8271 based).
>>
>> That's possible but I've never seen a SD board set and I have 8 or nine
>>complete machines and about that many more for parts plus hundreds of
>>Multibus cards. I guess that anyone that paid for a board set went with the
>>DD set. I don't think that the SD set is even shown in the few catalogs
>>that I have. I wonder why Intel would use bit slice on the SD board set
>>instead of an 8271?
>>
>> Joe
>
>
Received on Mon Nov 01 2004 - 10:25:31 GMT