CompuPro - Disk 2 &
Selector Channel
CompuPro's Disk 2 & Selector Channel was
a two board set to interface the S-100 bus to up to 4 Winchester hard disk
drives.
The DISK board featured a set of ribbon
cable connectors along the top which will directly accept up to four Winchester
type hard disk drives selected from a variety of manufacturers, models and
capacities. The board contained all of the hardware necessary to control the
drives including the ability to format them. The board also contained the
necessary hardware to arbitrate for and accept the bus as a temporary master per
the IEEE 696/S-100 specification and to transfer data thereon. The second board
the "SELECTOR CHANNEL" contained all of the hardware for generation of address,
status and control signals required for temporary master operation of the DISK
2. The two board combination functions exactly as a temporary master per the bus
specifications. No interconnections (other than the bus Itself) are required
between the boards for operation and all bus signals are used in their normal
way. The DISK 2 performs no useful function without the Selector channel board,
but the Selector channel may be shared by other controllers designed to use it.
The Disk 2 had quite a bit of
flexibility associated with it. The board used two IO ports which were switch
configurable. Sector sizes were also switch configurable (128 bytes - 2K bytes).
CompuPro provided CPM based software to format new disks.
The manual for these boards can be
obtained here.
This page was last modified
on
01/08/2011