H8-Z37 soft-sector controllers - Discussion

[Norberto Collado]

I did some studying on the WD2797 that is a super set of the WD1797 and there is a very very very simple schematic in the internet to glue the chip into a half size board. The design is very simple. The WD2797 price is $7.47 + shipping. I order about 2 to play with them using the H8 wire-wrap board. Actually the design looks simpler than the H8-Z67 controller design.

 

I think I'm going to clone the H8-Z37 PALs into a GALs contents just to keep chip count low. Once I get a board working on the wirewrap then I will post an update. Currently working on the H89-Z67 controller, so it will be a while.

 

Norberto

Les and I brainstormed about doing an H37, soft-sector controller clone--
maybe we should restart that discussion. I think we can "improve" the
design by using 2797 instead of 1797 (and the couple additional external
WD parts it required) and we might be able to eliminate the PALs from the
design too, trading a few more parts for ease of procurement and assembly.

Chris

[Chris Elmquist]

Hey Norberto... this sounds great. Do you have a pointer/reference to
the simple design that you found? I'd like to check it out.

My thinking was that the H8 and H89 bus interfaces should be able to
remain logically identical to the original design since the host-side
interface of 1797 and 2797 should be the same. If you want to keep the
PALs that's cool... we just have to provide a means to supply them for
the folks who do not have capability to program them themselves.

I was also thinking that on the drive interface side, we could incorporate
the equiv of Terry's PC37 (or indeed the same thing I did on the drive
side of the HSFE) to accomodate a twisted PC floppy cable. I would like
to provide jumpers or a header arrangement so that you can configure
the board for either a twisted PC cable or an untwisted regular cable
and then allow the drive selects to be remapped in arbitrary ways.

We might also consider providing a connection to 8" floppy drives but
we'll have to poll the group and see how much interest there would really
be in that.

Chris

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[Les Bird]

This sounds awesome. I'd like to see the schematic too.

- Les

[Mark Garlanger]

I'll throw out the idea of doing a H47 again, mainly because 5.25 1.2M floppies are electrically equivalent to 8" floppies, and those drives are still relatively cheap. Although, the H47 hardware could support 4 drives, the software only supported 2 drives, so a standard PC twisted cable could be designed to work with it. This seems like a relatively easy/cheap way to add storage. It would also have the advantage of being able to connect a real 8" drive to it. But, I'm not sure what chip they used on the controller.

Mark

[Norberto Collado]

Feedback below! 

 

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [sebhc] H8-Z37 soft-sector controllers - Discussion
From: Chris Elmquist <chris.e...@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, January 13, 2011 6:02 am
To: se...@googlegroups.com

Hey Norberto... this sounds great. Do you have a pointer/reference to
the simple design that you found? I'd like to check it out.

 

>>>> Here is the link, and just ignore the XC9572 CPLD.

http://home.comcast.net/~swtpc6800/DC5/DC5_Photo.jpg

 

My thinking was that the H8 and H89 bus interfaces should be able to
remain logically identical to the original design since the host-side
interface of 1797 and 2797 should be the same. If you want to keep the
PALs that's cool... we just have to provide a means to supply them for
the folks who do not have capability to program them themselves.

 

>>>> The board will include the GAL the same way I'm doing with the H8-Z67 controller, to enable those that are interested. Both interfaces will be identical, and the only difference is the address decoder and the "DISK/FLOPPY" signals on the H89.

I was also thinking that on the drive interface side, we could incorporate
the equiv of Terry's PC37 (or indeed the same thing I did on the drive
side of the HSFE) to accomodate a twisted PC floppy cable. I would like
to provide jumpers or a header arrangement so that you can configure
the board for either a twisted PC cable or an untwisted regular cable
and then allow the drive selects to be remapped in arbitrary ways.

 

>>> The board will include two connectors. One to drive the PC floppy drives and the second to drive the old standard 5 inch floppy, so that we can support 3 drives, and to provide the capability of transferring from the old 5 inch floppy drive to the new PC floppy drives. I will need your help in providing the jumpers and header arrangements to support both floppy cables.

We might also consider providing a connection to 8" floppy drives but
we'll have to poll the group and see how much interest there would really
be in that.

 

>>> I do not see why not on the H8 board. On the H89 might be tight, but I think it is possible. How many 8" floppy drives we do have working within this group????

[Norberto Collado]

 Mark,

 

I'm kind of confuse here. On my H8-Z37 controller I do have 5.25" 1.2M floppies connected and they are working with the 1.2M floppies media, so I do not see the link with the H47 or how much capacity does the H47 brings out when using the 1.2M media. Maybe is because I do not the know H47 controller.

 

Do we have a table that shows the H47 and the Z67 with different floppy media and storage capacity???? That will be nice to have before final board layout.

 

Norberto

 

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [sebhc] H8-Z37 soft-sector controllers - Discussion

From: Mark Garlanger <garl...@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, January 13, 2011 10:59 am
To: se...@googlegroups.com

I'll throw out the idea of doing a H47 again, mainly because 5.25 1.2M floppies are electrically equivalent to 8" floppies, and those drives are still relatively cheap. Although, the H47 hardware could support 4 drives, the software only supported 2 drives, so a standard PC twisted cable could be designed to work with it. This seems like a relatively easy/cheap way to add storage. It would also have the advantage of being able to connect a real 8" drive to it. But, I'm not sure what chip they used on the controller.

Mark

On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 9:17 AM, Les Bird <les...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

This sounds awesome. I'd like to see the schematic too.

- Les

On Jan 13, 2011, at 9:02 AM, Chris Elmquist <chris.e...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hey Norberto...  this sounds great.  Do you have a pointer/reference to
> the simple design that you found?  I'd like to check it out.
>

> My thinking was that the H8 and H89 bus interfaces should be able to
> remain logically identical to the original design since the host-side
> interface of 1797 and 2797 should be the same.  If you want to keep the
> PALs that's cool...  we just have to provide a means to supply them for
> the folks who do not have capability to program them themselves.
>

> I was also thinking that on the drive interface side, we could incorporate
> the equiv of Terry's PC37 (or indeed the same thing I did on the drive
> side of the HSFE) to accomodate a twisted PC floppy cable.  I would like
> to provide jumpers or a header arrangement so that you can configure
> the board for either a twisted PC cable or an untwisted regular cable
> and then allow the drive selects to be remapped in arbitrary ways.
>

> We might also consider providing a connection to 8" floppy drives but
> we'll have to poll the group and see how much interest there would really
> be in that.
>

[Chris Elmquist]

On Thursday (01/13/2011 at 12:59PM -0600), Mark Garlanger wrote:
> I'll throw out the idea of doing a H47 again, mainly because 5.25 1.2M
> floppies are electrically equivalent to 8" floppies, and those drives are
> still relatively cheap. Although, the H47 hardware could support 4 drives,
> the software only supported 2 drives, so a standard PC twisted cable could
> be designed to work with it. This seems like a relatively easy/cheap way to
> add storage. It would also have the advantage of being able to connect a
> real 8" drive to it. But, I'm not sure what chip they used on the
> controller.

Hi Mark...

I think the problem we have with H47 is that it is an interface
to intelligent 8" floppy drives. They actually have the controller
attached to or near the drives and the interface coming out of the H8
is basically a parallel interface over which commands and data flow.
It's a lot more like Norberto's SASI interface than it is like an H37.

An H37-like floppy interface would connect to an 8" drive using the
SA400/SA450-like interface which has serial read and write data streams
and step, direction and head select signals.

I am not sure this would match any Heath standard interface...
but we could sure make things like Teledisk and other software for
reading/writing multiple formats work with the thing.

And you are correct that we could use 5.25" 1.2M drives pretending to
be 8". That should work OK.

Chris

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Chris Elmquist

[Chris Elmquist]

I don't think Heath offered any soft-sector controller for the H8
or H89 that connected to "dumb" 8" floppy drives. The H47 was a
parallel interface to "intelligent" Remex drives, which had most of the
controller's brains out on the drive itself.

So, I think if we hook 8" "dumb" drives to H37, then we will be doing a
non-standard (from Heath's perspective) thing but it should be totally
workable. You would likely end up with the same capacity on these 8"
as you do with your 5.25" 1.2M you currently connect to your H37.
The difference would be physical compatibility with the real 8" media.

We'd then use some of the software that was mentioned the other day to
access the differing formats that appear on 8"... SSSD, SSDD, etc.

I currently have two working 8" drives but fewer controllers than that ;-)

Chris

> <[3]les...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>
> This sounds awesome. I'd like to see the schematic too.
> - Les
>
> On Jan 13, 2011, at 9:02 AM, Chris Elmquist

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Chris Elmquist

[Norberto Collado]

Chris,

 

Now I'm in sync. Walter mentioned to me about the parallel port design and he was checking on the schematic availbility to enable this capability.

 

Also we need to realize that the Heathkit systems supports a maximum of 2 controllers, so we are mostly likely to use the H67/H17 or the H67/H37. We will need to have at least 3 systems to support the H67/H37, H67/H17 and H17/H47 combos.

 

Thanks,

 

Norberto

[Jack Rubin]

>
>Norberto
>The H47 was a parallel interface to "intelligent" Remex drives, which had most
>of the
>>controller's brains out on the drive itself.
>>

It was even a bit more extreme than that - there was a master and slave drive,
with the first drive handling control for both devices. You could try to
convince yourself that it anticipated IDE. Add really flimsy construction to the
unique controller design and you come up with a device best forgotten.

Not sure about a controller but I've got a couple of drives that I'd be happy to
send out for a few bucks + the not-insignificant shipping costs.

Jack

[Mark Garlanger]

Hi Jack,

  Is it just the drives or the enclosure too? If it's the full enclosure, I'm definitely interested in it, especially if I could locate a controller, but even without a controller it is one of the few heathkit items I'm missing in my collection (H10 and H27 being the other two major items).
   Shipping would be bad, but I am planning a trip to Michigan this summer, maybe we can meet up then. BTW: Are you planning on having another SEBHC conference (or whatever it was called) this year? If so, any chance of having it during the summer when those of us with kids, would have a better chance at making it?

Thanks,
  Mark

[Jack Rubin]

I'll try to take some photos - it's a pair of Remex drives in a "traditional"
(non-Heath) side-by-side enclosure. I don't know what it went to originally or
if the drives would need to be reconfigured for the H47.

VCF Midwest will definitely be on again this year, but in the fall as before.
The date reflects a multitude of compromises and can't be moved. Sorry!

Jack

>
>From: Mark Garlanger <garl...@gmail.com>
>To: se...@googlegroups.com
>Sent: Thu, January 13, 2011 5:50:58 PM
>Subject: Re: [sebhc] H8-Z37 soft-sector controllers - Discussion
>

[Mark Garlanger]

Is your H8-Z37 something you made, or an official heath board? I haven't tried 1.2M floppies on my Z-89-37, but was told that they would not work since they have 360 RPM (vs. 300 RPM) and proportional increase in data rate that the controller/computer would not handle.
When you see you are using it with 1.2M media, are you getting 1.2M on each disk or formatting to the more typical ~700K size?

For the formatted size of the H47, it supported up to 1,261,568 bytes (DS/DD) or 256,000 (SS/SD) - per the specs in the catalog.
The H67, the catalog claims the drive only supported up to 1022 KB in DD mode.

[Norberto Collado]

It is the Heathkit H37 with 1.2M drives adjusted to 300 RPM's. I forgot to mention this.

 

If I can get the H47 controller diagrams that means  that we can use a regular 5" 1.2M drive and get 1,261,568 bytes (DS/DD) without any others requirements; correct?

 

Norberto

 

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [sebhc] H8-Z37 soft-sector controllers - Discussion

[Mark Garlanger]

On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 3:18 PM, Chris Elmquist <chris.e...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thursday (01/13/2011 at 12:59PM -0600), Mark Garlanger wrote:
> I'll throw out the idea of doing a H47 again, mainly because 5.25 1.2M
> floppies are electrically equivalent to 8" floppies, and those drives are
> still relatively cheap. Although, the H47 hardware could support 4 drives,
> the software only supported 2 drives, so a standard PC twisted cable could
> be designed to work with it. This seems like a relatively easy/cheap way to
> add storage. It would also have the advantage of being able to connect a
> real 8" drive to it. But, I'm not sure what chip they used on the
> controller.

Hi Mark...

I think the problem we have with H47 is that it is an interface
to intelligent 8" floppy drives.  They actually have the controller
attached to or near the drives and the interface coming out of the H8
is basically a parallel interface over which commands and data flow.
It's a lot more like Norberto's SASI interface than it is like an H37.

So the work is already half done ;-) 

Ok, it's probably not worth it, since it won't connect directly to the drives.


 

An H37-like floppy interface would connect to an 8" drive using the
SA400/SA450-like interface which has serial read and write data streams
and step, direction and head select signals.

I am not sure this would match any Heath standard interface...
but we could sure make things like Teledisk and other software for
reading/writing multiple formats work with the thing.

 

This must be how CDR and MMS created their soft-sectored controllers that supported both 5" and 8" drives.

Mark

 

[Mark Garlanger]

Based on what Chris and Jack said - that the majority of the control is in the drives or drive case, it looks like it would require both the H47 controller card the additional logic that was on the drive.

Mark

[Chris Elmquist]

On Thursday (01/13/2011 at 06:51PM -0600), Mark Garlanger wrote:
> Based on what Chris and Jack said - that the majority of the control is in
> the drives or drive case, it looks like it would require both the H47
> controller card the additional logic that was on the drive.

Well, in the day, the controller and the drives were not seperable. The
controller was made by Remex, not Heath... and was part of the "intelligent"
drive. As Jack mentioned, it was sort of an early IDE/ATA approach where
the drive vendor tried to simplify the interface to the drives by bundling
the complexity of the controller with the drive and then requiring only a
simple parallel channel into the host.

You might be able to find this controller design but then I have no
idea if the back side of that, the side that connects to the drive, is
a standard SA400/SA450-like floppy interface. It could be some totally
different thing.

So, the bottom line is that the H47 was a box and power supply, into
which these smart drives where put and connected to a very simple host
interface.

It would not be impossible I suppose to build an emulation of the H47 and
the associated disk controller and have that talk to a regular floppy
drive but that would be a big project and again, require some detailed
documentation on the Remex controller I would think.

Chris

> > sebhc+un...@googlegroups.com <sebhc%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com>.

> > For more options, visit this group at
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--
Chris Elmquist

[Norberto Collado]

Thanks for the clarification on the H47 controller operation!

[Chris Elmquist]

On Thursday (01/13/2011 at 06:03PM -0600), Mark Garlanger wrote:
> Is your H8-Z37 something you made, or an official heath board? I haven't
> tried 1.2M floppies on my Z-89-37, but was told that they would not work
> since they have 360 RPM (vs. 300 RPM) and proportional increase in data rate
> that the controller/computer would not handle.

I meant to comment on this earlier too...

Many if not most 1.2M floppy drives are capable of dual speed operation
because they need to run at 360 RPM for 1.2MB mode and 300 RPM for
360K mode. I have several here... I think they are Teac 55GFR, which
have a jumper that allows you to force them to one speed or the other.

There's a chart here which discusses that,

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/fdd/formatSummary-c.html

--
Chris Elmquist

[chris.e...@gmail.com]

Ya... here ya go,

http://www.oldskool.org/disk2fdi/525HDMOD.htm

--
Chris Elmquist

[Norberto Collado]

I also use adhesive tape to change the speed to 300. 

 

See the following link;

Let HD 5,25" FDDs operate at 300 rpm instead of 360 rpm

http://www.oldskool.org/disk2fdi/525HDMOD.htm

 

Norberto

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [sebhc] H8-Z37 soft-sector controllers - Discussion
From: Chris Elmquist <chris.e...@gmail.com>

Date: Thu, January 13, 2011 6:53 pm
To: se...@googlegroups.com

On Thursday (01/13/2011 at 06:03PM -0600), Mark Garlanger wrote:
> Is your H8-Z37 something you made, or an official heath board? I haven't
> tried 1.2M floppies on my Z-89-37, but was told that they would not work
> since they have 360 RPM (vs. 300 RPM) and proportional increase in data rate
> that the controller/computer would not handle.

I meant to comment on this earlier too...

Many if not most 1.2M floppy drives are capable of dual speed operation
because they need to run at 360 RPM for 1.2MB mode and 300 RPM for
360K mode. I have several here... I think they are Teac 55GFR, which
have a jumper that allows you to force them to one speed or the other.

There's a chart here which discusses that,

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/fdd/formatSummary-c.html


--
Chris Elmquist

--

[Norberto Collado]

Hello Chris,

What do you think about this design? For me looks cool, but I’m not the expert on floppy controller designs. With the proper guidance I should get there sooner or later!

Norberto

[Mark Garlanger]

I have the schematics for the CDR FDC 880H, if anyone is interested. I'll need to scan it and the binder does not make it easy, but I should have some time this weekend to scan it.

Mark

--

[Chris Elmquist]

On Thursday (01/13/2011 at 07:50PM -0800), Norberto Collado wrote:
> Hello Chris,
>
> What do you think about this design? For me looks cool, but I¹m not the
> expert on floppy controller designs. With the proper guidance I should get
> there sooner or later!

Hey Norberto--

ha! that's Michael Holly's controller for the SS30 bus! I have an
SWTPC 6800 that that would plug right into ;-) And now I remember seeing
it a long time ago.

The top-level page is here,

http://home.comcast.net/~swtpc6800/DC5/FDC_Index.htm

with schematics and other details.

I will study it more this weekend and compare with the H37 to make sure
we don't need to do some things a little differently. For example,
Michael's design has a timer circuit for drive ready that is gated by
index pulses from the drive. We have to make sure that approach will
work with H37's software in all cases or we may have to change that a
little to be compatible. There may be other subtle differences like
this we need to check for.

I'll get back to you in a couple days... but otherwise, I agree that it
is a real good starting point.

Chris

> >> Hey Norberto... this sounds great. Do you have a pointer/reference to
> >> the simple design that you found? I'd like to check it out.
> >>
> >>>>>> >>>> Here is the link, and just ignore the XC9572 CPLD.
> >> http://home.comcast.net/~swtpc6800/DC5/DC5_Photo.jpg

--
Chris Elmquist

[Chris Elmquist]

On Thursday (01/13/2011 at 11:30PM -0600), Mark Garlanger wrote:
> I have the schematics for the CDR FDC 880H, if anyone is interested. I'll
> need to scan it and the binder does not make it easy, but I should have some
> time this weekend to scan it.

And I too have a CDR FDC880H which indeed is soft-sector 5.25" and 8"
controller but it is not software compatible with the H37. You need
their drivers for all OS.

This would be another approach-- we could clone that design but then we
would have to make sure the software support was readily available.

My impression of that design is that it is a fairly early soft-sector
controller and has a lot of analog stuff on the front-end. I don't
remember for sure, but I think it is a 1797-like design, with external
data seperator and so doesn't achieve our initial goal of reducing parts
count and increasing reliability.

Chris

> On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 9:50 PM, Norberto Collado <
> norberto...@koyado.com> wrote:
>
> > Hello Chris,
> >
> > What do you think about this design? For me looks cool, but I’m not the
> > expert on floppy controller designs. With the proper guidance I should get
> > there sooner or later!
> >
> > Norberto
> >
> >
> > Hey Norberto... this sounds great. Do you have a pointer/reference to
> > the simple design that you found? I'd like to check it out.
> >
> > >>>> Here is the link, and just ignore the XC9572 CPLD.

> > *http://home.comcast.net/~swtpc6800/DC5/DC5_Photo.jpg<http://home.comcast.net/%7Eswtpc6800/DC5/DC5_Photo.jpg>
> > *

> >
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[Norberto Collado]

Cool!

My approach is to build the circuit into the wire-wrap board to verify that
it is Z37 compatible and it will be easy to debug/fine tune the design. Once
it works then we can go to layout without any issues.

Thanks,

norberto

[steve shumaker]

what 8" capabilities existed in 3rd party products?

steve

[steve shumaker]

what is an H-27?

steve

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[steve shumaker]

Norberto

what diagrams are you looking for?

steve

[Mark Garlanger]

It's the dual 8" drives for the H11.

Mark

[Mark Garlanger]

CDR and Magnola Microsystem both offered soft-sectored controllers that supported both 5" drives and 8" drives connected at the same time. I think there was at least one other company, too, but I can't think of the name.

Mark

[Chris Elmquist]

On Friday (01/14/2011 at 07:56AM -0800), steve shumaker wrote:
> Norberto
>
> what diagrams are you looking for?

I think at the time we were talking about the H-47 and the associated
controller that is attached to the Remex drive. Personally, I think
that is a very difficult project to try to replicate but others may have
a different impression.

You would need some detail on how the Remex controller connects to
their floppy drive to be able to determine whether you could build a
replacement controller, that is register compatible with the original
yet connects to a standard 8" drive interface.

There's a good chance that controller is really an entire single board
computer with processor, ram, rom, etc.

Chris

--
Chris Elmquist

[steve shumaker]

oh! then I want one too!

what was offered in the way of H11 unique (vs DEC) software?

steve

On 1/14/2011 8:10 AM, Mark Garlanger wrote:
> It's the dual 8" drives for the H11.
>
> Mark
>
> On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 9:53 AM, steve shumaker <shum...@att.net
> <mailto:shum...@att.net>> wrote:
>
> what is an H-27?
>
> steve
>
>
> On 1/13/2011 3:50 PM, Mark Garlanger wrote:
>
> Hi Jack,
>
> Is it just the drives or the enclosure too? If it's the full
> enclosure, I'm definitely interested in it, especially if I
> could locate a controller, but even without a controller it is
> one of the few heathkit items I'm missing in my collection
> (H10 and H27 being the other two major items).
> Shipping would be bad, but I am planning a trip to Michigan
> this summer, maybe we can meet up then. BTW: Are you planning
> on having another SEBHC conference (or whatever it was called)
> this year? If so, any chance of having it during the summer
> when those of us with kids, would have a better chance at
> making it?
>
> Thanks,
> Mark
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 4:08 PM, Jack Rubin
> <jack....@ameritech.net <mailto:jack....@ameritech.net>

> <mailto:jack....@ameritech.net

> <mailto:se...@googlegroups.com <mailto:se...@googlegroups.com>>.

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[Gregg Chandler]

If memory serves, I also had to request a couple of modifications to the
standard Remex firmware. My memory is that it had some nasty bugs. We also
wanted to be able to detect when the media was changed. They may have
worked these modifications into the drives that they delivered to
others--but I wouldn't count on it.

[walter]

I bought an H-47 clone from DataCompass and the unit/drives worked
fine (until failure from wear and tear). The complete technical
manual came with the drives and I still have it. The Remex master
drive (RFS4810) had a 6800 microprocessor, RAM, ROM, one MC6821 PIA
and a FD1791. The slave drives (RFS4820) did not have the afore
mentioned hardware. I don't think the FD1791 did side select so they
must have generated that via the 6800.

A few years back I was looking at connecting a standard 8" drive to
the expansion connector of the unit. At that time I thought it was
simply a matter of making the correct cable. Ran out of time to try
it. The manual does document the interface/commands. Pretty simple.
I seem to recall I was one line short of being able to talk to the
Remex master drive off of a standard PC parallel port.

One thing that has been sitting in the back of my mind for a while is
that it would be easy to set up an H-47 emulator running on a host
system. The host system could "mount" .svd (???) or other format
disks and respond to the I/O requests. The emulator should be able to
mount just about any format disk from 100K 5.25" images on through
whatever maximum was allowed by the file system. It would not have to
be limited to standard 8" formats! The standard driver was able to
handle standard IBM formats, it should be easy to add our own.

One of the reasons I liked this idea is that the interface is really
easy to build and I beleve that all extended configuration systems had
the H47 firmware (not positive about this). This might have changed
when the H-37 or H-67 came along with new ROMs - never had one so I
don't know. Anyway, a simple H47 emulator running on a PC would
eliminate the need for any of the pesky floppy drives, hard drives,
flash drives, etc. It would also allow you a means by whch any of
your "flopppies" would be available to be mounted when you wanted them
to be without having to do something to partition tables or whatever
you would do with hard disks on the H8.

Oh well, past midnight, brain hurts.

..walt

[Chris Elmquist]

Hi Walt...

Great information on the H-47. I especially like that the Remex
controller had a 6800 on it. I'm a big fan of the Moto 6800 and there is
actually a reference design in the Motorola Microprocessor Applications
manual for a 6800 based floppy controller. Might be where Remex got
the idea ;-)

Your idea of using a host PC as the storage emulator is a good one.
Dan Emrick did a lot of work in this area using the USB interface that I
put together. Although this approach required new drivers on the Heath
side as we weren't emulating an existing controller, it did work and as
you say, allows pretty much unlimited storage options.

I've been interested in exploring AoE protocol too... which is a means
to carry ATA drive commands and data over a MAC-layer ethernet protocol.
You essentially build a SAN, using just ethernet and a host PC provides
the storage from anything attached to it... which you can then carve up
and serve to any nodes connected on the SAN. Because it is a MAC-layer
protocol, you do not need a monster (from an 8-bit processor's view)
TCP stack and other overhead to get on and off the ethernet. You just
need to be able to send raw frames.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATA_over_Ethernet

I guess I see something like this as a way to provide lots of storage
for lots of different old machines as long as you can build a simple
ethernet interface for each one.

Chris

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[Dan Emrick]

Hi, Walt,

When Chris brought up the USB link to storage on a PC I just had to
jump in. I guess one of the reasons that this adapter hasn't gained
much favor is that it is currently an HDOS only gadget, mainly 'cause
I never got deeply into CP/M. I moved from HDOS to DEC to UNIX to
Linux without ever passing through CP/M or MS-DOS. So far we haven't
spent time on a patch for CP/M. The adapter and associated driver and
PC software handle any "type" of disk that HDOS understands. The size
of an HDOS managed disk is limited largely by media characteristics.
The file structure allows quite large disk formats, so one can be
fairly creative with the PC images of HDOS disks. I suspect the same
is true of CP/M.

Even though I'm currently working on a different, non-SEBHC project,
I'd be glad to resurrect the USB-PC link stuff if you're interested.
The HDOS driver is fairly simple and most of the work is done on the
PC side.

Check out

http://danemricksite.net/screenshots/h89usb

for some photos of two hardware versions of the adapter, along with

http://danemricksite.net/HeathkitProjects.html#USB/H8D

for a brief description of work so far. I'll need help to develop a CP/
M adaptation for it. (By the way, while I am generally Windows-
averse, I do have a Windows XP version of the PC software that seems
to work for me, although not thoroughly tested.)

Following another rabbit trail, I've been working on a means to handle
H17 drives with a PC. My first attempt using direct parallel port
access met with serious timing/response issues due to port handling by
the PC OS. The next attempt uses a micro-controller between the two,
but the project got side-tracked by the non-SEBHC one.

Let me know if you're interested in any details of either project.

Dan

[Kenneth L. Owen]

Hi Dan,

After building my H-89, I moved to CP/M rather quickly due to the lack
of inter-connectivity in HDOS, primarily because I could not find a
modem program. As far as I know, this problem still exists.

In taking a quick look at your site and doing a quick read of some of
the notes, it appears that we would still have a bit of a problem moving
files from a file system independent mode into the HDOS device. I hope
that I am wrong on this!

The one piece that is NOT available in the Z67-IDE is the ability to use
the HDOS OS -- we no longer have the HDOS drivers!

I would get back into HDOS if I could get away from having to use floppy
disks as the primary medium and we could make movement of files easy in
a non-specific file system mode. I will study your pages some more.

Later, -- ken

[Norberto Collado]

Hello Dan,

My only interest in this idea for the H8 under CP/M is to be able to
transfer CP/M files to the USB flash drive and then be able to read such
files under Windows. This will allow me to transfer any files that I want
from the PC to the H8 and vice versa by only using the USB flash drive.

I already have the circuitry in place on my H8-Z67 wire-wrap board and the
only part that is missing is the CP/M software to accomplish such task.

See attached picture.

I will check your website to find the source files to do only file transfer.

Thanks for a great project,

Norberto

[Norberto Collado]

There is hope down the horizon. I have an H89 from Walter that is using the
Magnolia 77320 SASI Controller and there is a hard drive attached to it. I
hope that the hard drive is still functional and that the HDOS driver is
there.

Also I want to add support on the Z67-IDE controller to support the Magnolia
77320 SASI board, because it supports eight Z67-IDE for a total of 16 IDE
drives or 16 CF cards. The current BIOS that we have for the Z67-IDE will
support this capability. The only part that I'm missing are the Magnolia
77320 schematics.

Hopefully the H89 hard drive will be functional.

Norberto

[walter]

I was not a CP/M guy, just HDOS, but I have to assume that CP/M also
had an H-47 driver and pretty much used the same command set to the
Remex drives. It would be very simple to implement the command set
using your favorite processor, for example a PIC (no religious wars
please, I just happen to have recently done some work with one)
interfaced to the H8/89 bus. What is on the back end of the PIC could
be ethernet, USB, FLASH, web server, FTP, anything you wanted, it
would not matter - access is encapsulated in the Remex command set.
HDOS - CP/M would just see an H-47 out there and talk to it using the
standard driver.

..walt

> > Chris Elmquist- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Norberto Collado]

Hello Walter,

Can you supply the H47 schematics and the Remex command set to see what is
needed to do this? Do we have an H47 controller and the Remex drives
available for testing under CP/M? At least with the H47 schematics we can
create a prototype if the Remex drives are available and functional.

If the above is in place that I can use, then we can add support on the
Z67-IDE controller to talk to the H47 controller. I think this is the easy
way to do this; for me at least. Also do we have the H47 Heathkit
documentation as well?

The CP/M BIOS for the Z67-IDE support the H-47 controller.

Norbert

[steve shumaker]

Hello Norberto!

In checking, it would appear that I have the complete H47 document set
(from the Heath perspective anyway - no Remex docs). Would these help?
I've not had the chance to scan and post them yet but they appear intact
(schematics, Illustration booklet.. everything. Of note are some charts
that discuss commands and data structure). I also have all the hardware
although in an unknown condition. Will any of this help you?

Steve

[Dan Emrick]

Norberto,

The H89/USB adapter project may not help you with your USB transfer
goal. From a hardware perspective, the H89 USB adapter is a USB
device, not a host. We can't plug a thumb drive into it. We have to
plug it into a USB host It differs from "normal" USB gadget in that
once connected via USB, the H89 issues commands rather than responds
to them while the host waits for commands from the USB link and
responds.

The PC side uses a proprietary library from FTDI, but still provides
all the functionality we need. There is an open source version, but I
haven't tried it as yet.

Dan

On Jan 15, 1:24 pm, steve shumaker <shuma...@att.net> wrote:
> Hello Norberto!
>
> In checking, it would appear that I have the complete H47 document set
> (from the Heath perspective anyway - no Remex docs).  Would these help?  
> I've not had the chance to scan and post them yet but they appear intact
> (schematics, Illustration booklet.. everything.  Of note are some charts
> that discuss commands and data structure).  I also have all the hardware
> although in an unknown condition.  Will any of this help you?
>
> Steve
>
> On 1/15/2011 10:02 AM, Norberto Collado wrote:
>
> > Hello Walter,
>
> > Can you supply the H47 schematics and the Remex command set to see what is
> > needed to do this? Do we have an H47 controller and the Remex drives
> > available for testing under CP/M? At least with the H47 schematics we can
> > create a prototype if the Remex drives are available and functional.
>
> > If the above is in place that I can use, then we can add support on the
> > Z67-IDE controller to talk to the H47 controller. I think this is the easy
> > way to do this; for me at least. Also do we have the H47 Heathkit
> > documentation as well?
>
> > The CP/M BIOS for the Z67-IDE support the H-47 controller.
>
> > Norbert
>

> > On 1/15/11 9:44 AM, "walter"<w...@starlightmeadows.com>  wrote:

[dwight elvey]

Hi
 I have a slave drive that I'd gladly trade for a SA851. Condition
is unknown but it doesn't look beat up.
 I'd thought of making a standard interface for it ( buffers and inverters
is about all that is needed for the slave ). If I could find
a more standard drive, I'd be happy.
Dwight
 

[Norberto Collado]

Dan,

Thanks for the update.

Norberto

[Norberto Collado]

Hello Steve,

Can you send me the H47 doc's and the H47 controller if you have one? I do
no think I need the drives at this time. It will be easier to get the drives
from Walter if I need them. I just want to probe with a logic analyzer the
H47 bus to see the commands being send and compare that to the
documentation.

From the emails I sense that the H47 is a very simple board and all the
decoding is done at the drives controller. I think this is the same approach
used by Heath on the Z67 SASI controller, when they attached the MRX101D
Controller to drive the Memorex 8" floppy drives.

Thanks,

Norberto

[steve shumaker]

I'll get the stuff scanned early this week and package the controller as
well.... From the schematics, it would seem you are correct - it
appears to be a relatively simple board. Interesting note is that
depictions of the unit show capability for connections to slave2 and
slave3 drives as well! (I've had this pkg for over a year but with all
the away from home work never had a chance to really look at it -
interesting stuff!)

steve

[Norberto Collado]

 Thanks!

[Mark Garlanger]

I remember reading that the hardware supported up to 4 devices, but the software didn't support it.

Mark

[Norberto Collado]

So the software supported two; right? 

 

If I get this working with the Z67-IDE controller, that means that we can only have 2 CF cards attach with a capacity of 1.2MB per card; correct?

 

Can I get a justification on why we need to support the H47?

 

I have no problems in enabling the H47 with current hardware because I can gain knowledge on this design.

 

Norberto

 

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [sebhc] Re: H8-Z37 soft-sector controllers - Discussion

[Mark Garlanger]

The thought it allow us to connect 2 - 5.25" HD floppy drives, which would act like 8" drives. I wasn't aware of the extra control board in the master 8" drive. Connecting it to CF doesn't seem like it would be worth it, especially since we have the Z67 boards, which gives us more space and more partitions. I would only be interested in a H-89-47 controller, if it would work with real floppy drives. Maybe the controller logic and the logic at the drive can be combined to fit on to one board. If not, it's probably not worth it.

Mark

[Norberto Collado]

I agree! At DEC I worked on the SCSI to floppy interface, and I think I might still have the schematics and the FW. 

 

I think the H47 is based on the same principle;

 

H-8 Bus <--> H47 <--> Micro-controller <--> Two floppy drives. 

 

With the IDE-Z67 Storage controller you can bring the IDE bus out to an IDE to CF enclosure and use the second CF card as a big floppy drive. It is called the IDE DigiDrive PRO from;

 

http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_reader/AEUDMD4.asp

 

Also Terry H89 IDE board gives more options in terms of storage, and future expansions.

 

I got used to the boot speed of the Z67-IDE controller and when I boot from the H17, sometimes I get confused and I think the system is hung, but that is not the case. It is still booting at a slow pace.

 

We need to start thinking on moving past the floppies and embrace the new technologies. For backwards compatibility it makes sense to keep the H17 and the Z37 alive. 

 

Hope this helps,

[Norberto Collado]

Mark,

I was thinking that the best I can do is to support the LS-120 IDE floppy drive which can read 1.44MB floppies or it can give you 120MB of storage when using the LS-120 media. This can be a viable solution for backups.

I will like to know if someone has a LS-120 “IDE floppy drive” that I can borrow to test this configuration. I saw an LS-120 IDE floppy drive on ebay and will keep my eye on it.

Norbert

On 1/15/11 6:22 PM, "Mark Garlanger" <garl...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Chris Elmquist]

I'm interested in exploring the H-47 interface and command set so would
appreciate access to the docs if you guys scan them. Even more interesting
would be the source for any HDOS or CP/M drivers. Are those around?
I have't gone looking yet...

I'd like to see if the driver(s) query the controller to determine
the size of the media and dynamically adjust to whatever it reports.
In other words, is there a part of the initialization that would allow
different sized drives to be used in the system-- even if only 1.2M 8"
floppies were ever offered.

If the system is dynamic in this way, then we could use the H47 protocol
as a basic transport layer and have a controller emulation that does as
Walt suggested-- hang ethernet, USB flash, SD cards, ATA/CF, whatever
you want on the back size and this controller and the protocol will
accomodate that.

Chris

> > sebhc+un...@googlegroups.com <sebhc%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com>.

> > For more options, visit this group at
> > http://groups.google.com/group/sebhc?hl=en.
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[Les Bird]

Norberto,

I have a LS-120 somewhere. I'll try to find it. It might be buried in a box somewhere though.

- Les

[Norberto Collado]

Hello Les,

If you can find it that will be great. Also I’m trying to get one that is on ebay for development purposes.

Based on the H47 documentation at your website, it uses a 40 pin cable and the interface is the parallel port, just as the one in the PC’s.

Once we get information on the command set, then we can figure out how it calculates the storage limits.

It will be nice to enable the H-47 as an alternative for storage transfer. However the H8 CP/M OS only supports two controllers at the same time, and we are more likely to have the H17-HSFE/H37, H17-HSFE/H67 and H37/H67 combinations.

I will keep working (as time permits) in enabling the USB flash drive to work on the H8 and H89 to allow easy files transfers from the PC to the H8 using the standard DOS FAT format.

Thanks,

Norberto

On 1/16/11 8:16 AM, "Les Bird" <les...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

[Terry Gulczynski]

Norberto,

H47 storage capacity is hard-wired based on the type of format: Single- or
double-sided, and single, double, or extended density. The CP/M BIOS DPB tables
have the information:

SS/SD: 1K block size, 243 Blocks, 2 blocks reserved for directory: 241K
DS/SD: 2K block size, 247 blocks, 2 blocks reserved for directory: 490K

SS/DD: 2K block size, 243 blocks, 2 blocks reserved for directory: 482K
DS/DD: 2K block size, 494 blocks, 4 blocks reserved for directory: 980K

SS/ED: 2K block size, 300 blocks, 2 blocks reserved for directory: 596K
DS/ED: 2K block size, 608 blocks, 4 blocks reserved for directory: 1208K

Regards,

Terry

[Norby]

Terry,

Thanks for the feedback. I really appreciated all your help.

Norbert

Terry Gulczynski <terr...@cfl.rr.com> wrote:

[Bill malcolm]

HI: All
I am thinking of connecting a Western Digital WD-1005 SASI controller to my H-8. It is much like H-47 --- it supports 4 hard disks & 4 floppies.  It used to be connected to my Tandy  model 16  unix system back in 86.

I am looking for the ROM CODE for the H-37 -- any help?

thanks

---

Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2011 12:59:18 -0600
Subject: Re: [sebhc] H8-Z37 soft-sector controllers - Discussion
From: garl...@gmail.com
To: se...@googlegroups.com

I'll throw out the idea of doing a H47 again, mainly because 5.25 1.2M floppies are electrically equivalent to 8" floppies, and those drives are still relatively cheap. Although, the H47 hardware could support 4 drives, the software only supported 2 drives, so a standard PC twisted cable could be designed to work with it. This seems like a relatively easy/cheap way to add storage. It would also have the advantage of being able to connect a real 8" drive to it. But, I'm not sure what chip they used on the controller.

Mark

On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 9:17 AM, Les Bird <les...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

This sounds awesome. I'd like to see the schematic too.

- Les

On Jan 13, 2011, at 9:02 AM, Chris Elmquist <chris.e...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hey Norberto...  this sounds great.  Do you have a pointer/reference to
> the simple design that you found?  I'd like to check it out.
>
> My thinking was that the H8 and H89 bus interfaces should be able to
> remain logically identical to the original design since the host-side
> interface of 1797 and 2797 should be the same.  If you want to keep the
> PALs that's cool...  we just have to provide a means to supply them for
> the folks who do not have capability to program them themselves.
>
> I was also thinking that on the drive interface side, we could incorporate
> the equiv of Terry's PC37 (or indeed the same thing I did on the drive
> side of the HSFE) to accomodate a twisted PC floppy cable.  I would like
> to provide jumpers or a header arrangement so that you can configure
> the board for either a twisted PC cable or an untwisted regular cable
> and then allow the drive selects to be remapped in arbitrary ways.
>
> We might also consider providing a connection to 8" floppy drives but
> we'll have to poll the group and see how much interest there would really
> be in that.
>
> Chris
>
> On Wednesday (01/12/2011 at 09:13PM -0700), Norberto Collado wrote:
>>   I did some studying on the WD2797 that is a super set of the WD1797 and
>>   there is a very very very simple schematic in the internet to glue the
>>   chip into a half size board. The design is very simple. The WD2797 price
>>   is $7.47 + shipping. I order about 2 to play with them using the H8
>>   wire-wrap board. Actually the design looks simpler than the H8-Z67
>>   controller design.
>>
>>   I think I'm going to clone the H8-Z37 PALs into a GALs contents just to
>>   keep chip count low. Once I get a board working on the wirewrap then I
>>   will post an update. Currently working on the H89-Z67 controller, so it
>>   will be a while.
>>
>>   Norberto
>>
>>     Les and I brainstormed about doing an H37, soft-sector controller
>>     clone--
>>     maybe we should restart that discussion. I think we can "improve" the
>>     design by using 2797 instead of 1797 (and the couple additional external
>>     WD parts it required) and we might be able to eliminate the PALs from
>>     the
>>     design too, trading a few more parts for ease of procurement and
>>     assembly.
>>
>>     Chris

>>
>>   --
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>

> --
> Chris Elmquist

>
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[Norberto Collado]

The ROM code is at Les website (PAM37/XCON-8) to update the H8-Z80 board.

Norberto

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> Chris Elmquist
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[Norberto Collado]

Chris,

 

Any status/progress on the H37 "remake"... ???

 

Thanks,

 

Norberto

[Chris Elmquist]

On Friday (01/21/2011 at 08:56PM -0700), Norberto Collado wrote:
> Chris,
>  
> Any status/progress on the H37 "remake"... ???

No... not too much yet. I plan to spend some time this weekend creating
symbols for WD2797 and some other parts in Eagle so that I can do at least
an electronic schematic.

Then I thought I too would prototype something that plugs into the WD1797
socket on an existing H-37 (or whatever the H-89 version is called)--
essentially a daughterboard that uses the H-37 bus interface but puts the
'2797 on the backend and gets us to the drive(s).

So, at the this point a lot of thinking but no real work... :-(

cje

--
Chris Elmquist

[Norberto Collado]

So I will proceed to wirewrap one for the H8, and when you get the time to
figure out the details, can you identify which pins signals are you planning
to change so that I can leave those pins alone until you get the electronic
schematic?

Thanks,

Norberto

[Chris Elmquist]

On Saturday (01/22/2011 at 09:28AM -0800), Norberto Collado wrote:
> So I will proceed to wirewrap one for the H8, and when you get the time to
> figure out the details, can you identify which pins signals are you planning
> to change so that I can leave those pins alone until you get the electronic
> schematic?

I think if you look at the design you found for the SS-50 bus, everything
on the host interface side of the 2797 will have a corresponding signal
to connect to on the 1797 host side (facing the H8 bus). We will hook all
of those up the same way.

On the drive interface side, things are very different since the 1797 has
lots of other external parts to build up the data seperator which we won't
need with 2797.

I envision combining the SS-50 design's drive side with some concepts
stolen from the CDR FDC-880H to get us connected to 8" drives as well.

Although, we should probably have a group pow-wow about that... I think
to add 8" support, we will need a register in host I/O space to switch
between 5.25" and 8" modes and there is no precedent for this in any
existing Heath drivers for H-37... so to use 8" capability with such
a controller, we will have to make new drivers to support it. We can
certainly have it default to being fully H-37 compatible in 5.25" mode
if this register is not touched but to put it into 8" mode and then use
that capability, we'll need to invoke new software support.

Chris

--
Chris Elmquist

[Norberto Collado]

 

 I think if you look at the design you found for the SS-50 bus, everything
on the host interface side of the 2797 will have a corresponding signal
to connect to on the 1797 host side (facing the H8 bus). We will hook all
of those up the same way.

 

>>> ON THE HOST INTERFACE I'M FINE THEM.

On the drive interface side, things are very different since the 1797 has
lots of other external parts to build up the data seperator which we won't
need with 2797.

 

>>> SO I CAN USE THE SAME DESIGN AS THE SS-50 ON THE DRIVE SIDE!!!!

I envision combining the SS-50 design's drive side with some concepts
stolen from the CDR FDC-880H to get us connected to 8" drives as well.

>>> FOR THE H37, THEN I CAN USE THE SAME CIRCUIT AS THE SS-50 ON THE DRIVE SIDE.

Although, we should probably have a group pow-wow about that... I think
to add 8" support, we will need a register in host I/O space to switch
between 5.25" and 8" modes and there is no precedent for this in any
existing Heath drivers for H-37... so to use 8" capability with such
a controller, we will have to make new drivers to support it. We can
certainly have it default to being fully H-37 compatible in 5.25" mode
if this register is not touched but to put it into 8" mode and then use
that capability, we'll need to invoke new software support.

 

>>> THE PRIORITY ON THE WIREWRAP BOARD IS TO GET THE H37 WORKING WITH THE 5.25" DRIVES AND THE HEATHKIT H37 SOFTWARE. ARE THE 8" DRIVES AVAILABLE OR FUNCTIONAL???  EVENTUALLY ONCE EVERYTHING IS WORKING ON THE H37 BOARD THEN WE CAN ADD A FLIP-FLOP ON I/O SPACE TO TOGGLE BETWEEN THE 5.25" AND THE 8" DRIVE SELECTION IF REQUIRED.

NORBERTO

[Chris Elmquist]

On Saturday (01/22/2011 at 11:44AM -0700), Norberto Collado wrote:
>  
>  I think if you look at the design you found for the SS-50 bus, everything
> on the host interface side of the 2797 will have a corresponding signal
> to connect to on the 1797 host side (facing the H8 bus). We will hook all
> of those up the same way.
>  
> >>> ON THE HOST INTERFACE I'M FINE THEM.

Yes... we're basically going to loose the CPLD that he used to interface
to the SS-30 bus and instead wire the '2797 to the H8 and H89 bus interface
the same way the original H-37 was done.

Refering to Z-89-37 schematic (595-2674-01), we'll need U11 as well because
that is the latch that registers the motor control and all of the drive
selects.

We'll need U9 and U10 which is the 1 MHz clock source to the 2797.

Then all the other decode and bus transceivers... I guess, pretty much
everything to the left of U12 on that schematic.

When Les and I discussed this back in 2009, I did decompose the two PALs
into discrete 74xx logic so we have the option of leaving off the PALs
and putting down more easily obtained parts... but, if you want to do
the PALs (as GALs) we can sure do that too.

> On the drive interface side, things are very different since the 1797 has
> lots of other external parts to build up the data seperator which we won't
> need with 2797.
>  
> >>> SO I CAN USE THE SAME DESIGN AS THE SS-50 ON THE DRIVE SIDE!!!!

That's pretty much the case. Refering to that schematic, we don't
need U4 or U5A, because the Heath controller runs with the WD part
"always ready"-- ie, pin 32 will be pulled up and it times the drive
ready in software.

We need U5B and the two pots near it... there is still an adjustment/cal
procedure for the 2797 controller and those pots are for that.

We'll need a jumper header to enable the TEST input on pin 27 of 2797
which is handled by S1-F on Holley's design. But the rest of those
switches (S1-A through S1-D) disappear since they go into the CPLD.

Then, I'll still owe you some detail on what we'll do with some of
the new signals on 2797 that do not exist on the 1797... these mostly
relate to the 5.25 vs 8" selection stuff.

I'm starting to lean toward punting on the 8" capability for this design.
It looks now like it will have too much impact on the fundamental
configuration of the 2797 to allow the modes to be switched correctly
(for example, one issue is that you need a different clock going into the
2797 and then to select 5.25 vs 8" some control registers are programmed
differently). Perhaps we'll save that for another day (or those of us
that want it can kludge something by hacking up a regular board).

Instead, we can do a little work on the drive side 5.25" configuration
and put down, say, two 34-pin headers that are already wired to connect
to PC drives using twisted cables. Then, you can have four drives on
the H-37, two on each twisted cable. Does that make more sense?

> I envision combining the SS-50 design's drive side with some concepts
> stolen from the CDR FDC-880H to get us connected to 8" drives as well.
> >>> FOR THE H37, THEN I CAN USE THE SAME CIRCUIT AS THE SS-50 ON THE DRIVE
> SIDE.
> Although, we should probably have a group pow-wow about that... I think
> to add 8" support, we will need a register in host I/O space to switch
> between 5.25" and 8" modes and there is no precedent for this in any
> existing Heath drivers for H-37... so to use 8" capability with such
> a controller, we will have to make new drivers to support it. We can
> certainly have it default to being fully H-37 compatible in 5.25" mode
> if this register is not touched but to put it into 8" mode and then use
> that capability, we'll need to invoke new software support.
>  
> >>> THE PRIORITY ON THE WIREWRAP BOARD IS TO GET THE H37 WORKING WITH THE
> 5.25" DRIVES AND THE HEATHKIT H37 SOFTWARE. ARE THE 8" DRIVES AVAILABLE OR
> FUNCTIONAL???  EVENTUALLY ONCE EVERYTHING IS WORKING ON THE H37 BOARD THEN
> WE CAN ADD A FLIP-FLOP ON I/O SPACE TO TOGGLE BETWEEN THE 5.25" AND THE 8"
> DRIVE SELECTION IF REQUIRED.

I agree. 8" drives are still around and I guess I thought there might
be some need to be able to migrate stuff from 8" media to more modern
storage. But personally, I can do that on other platforms and so don't
really need to bludgeon an H8 or H89 into doing it.

So, let's go for a simple H37 clone for H8 and H89 backplane that can
talk to up to four 5.25" or 3.5" drives using two 34-pin connectors
accepting PC-style twisted cables with two drives on each connector.

Sound reasonable?

Chris

--
Chris Elmquist

[Norberto Collado]

Sound reasonable?

A big "YES"....

Thanks for the feedback,

Norberto

[Mark Garlanger]

My reason for requesting 8" support, was mainly to allow unmodified 5.25" 1.2M drives.  It would be nice to have it, but if it would add too much, it can be left out. Would it be possible/easy to make it selectable with a jumper or as a build-time option? i.e. it will only support 5.25" or 8" drives, depending on the jumper or how it was built.

Also, if it wouldn't be too hard, I'd suggest a jumper to allow either 2 PC-style twisted cables or the older straight-through cables. This will give the builder more flexibility.

Mark

[Norberto Collado]

A jumper sounds more feasible to select 5.25" or 8" drives.

On the jumper to allow either 2 PC-style twisted cables or the older straight-through cables, I will defer to Chris to verify if feasible while keeping the design simple.

Norberto

[van wd8aam]

2 Books For Sale (CP/M handbook with MP/M
and Introduction to Wordstar)

Both are Sybex Softcover books, copyright around 1980 or so.

I'd like $2 and $4.95 priority mail shipping if you'd like
these 'ancient history' books.

If shipping outside USA, then email your address for
rates to ship. Paypal for payment is fine. My account is
my email address. (OR, just mail a check)

Van Lincoln
1101 Butterfly Lane
Jordan, Minnesota 55352
952-221-4960 cell