So far I've searched but haven't found out any real information on what I have bought, would anyone be able to shed some light on it's spec and the various options included? Has anyone owned or used one of these?
Really just looking for any info at all before it arrives in the next few days. An engineer friend speaks very highly of R&S so hopefully I found a bargain?
"Speaking of manuals, I made an interesting discovery the other day. I was looking for a manual for a piece of equipment I have. The website of the company for the equipment no longer had the manual on their website, but they used to have it there. I was able to find the manual on archived copies of their website at the WayBackMachine.
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I think you need to know the URL of the deceased website which may be a problem.
They have been trying to sell it for a while though, had seen it come up in the listings before, was close to $200 then. Will see what happens in the next few days else will then be looking out for an HP 16500B mainframe and
16510B card or similar.
All I know is that I need one, to turn the weeks of trial and error into days. Reverse engineering the Atari ACSI protocol at the moment, kind of a SCSI hybrid but with added twists. Designed in the days before SCSI was an industry standard, early 80's.
It's here!! Certainly has to be seen to be believed, it's about a 19" 4U.
100Mhz 8 channel, 20Mhz 32 channel. Also looks like it has a 100Mhz function generator in there too. 3.5" Floppy disk drive, runs on CPM/86.
20 way IDC connectors on the front.
I remember that one. Atari obviously made drives, but another company (was it ICP? I'm sure they were German) made one as well. I had one, but the drive had stiction, and I sold it quickly.
I think the Atari drive (teh original narrow box, not the Mega ST flat box) used a Seagate drive and a Seagate controlle rpiggy-backed. Another board (smaller) did the conversion from ACSI to SCSI.
Yep, you know it :) There's a bit of revived enthusiasm out there for the Atari's. The trouble I'm finding with the ACSI standard is that most of the technical information out there is from the programmers point of view with little referring to the hardware implementation as far as timings go.
Have started a transparant IDE interface for the ST which plugs into the ACSI port, as far as the ST knows it's connected to a vanilla ST drive. The IDE/CF coding has been completed for some months with the ACSI side dragging on. I'd thought I could do it by trial and error but that ain't happnin :) Hence the logic analyser.
The LA has the following options; 20Mhz digital storage scope, 100Mhz 8 channel LA, 20Mhz 48 channel LA, CP/M 86. Aside from that just getting round to figuring out the pin assignments of the ports atm. Would love a CP/M boot disk so I could load/save samples. It might even print out to something like an EPSON FX-80 at 4800 or somethng. :)
Trawled and trawled the web before starting the project, also have the few odd books, ST Drives Inside and Out, being one of them. So much of the information is from the ST DMA programming side, very little to do with signal rise and fall times, there's not too much out there relating to the hardware side.
Have you seen how much they cost!! :) These old clapped out drives regularly go for £50 to £100 on eBay, with the SCSI host adapters alone commanding similar figures. The plan here is to jump on the bandwagon and design a new one in full (100's units) production. Did the PS2 PeST mouse interface and sold about 100 of those last year, about to get another 180 PCBs in to throw out another batch to the four corners. There's money to be made with this old kit, most employers/people just brush it aside as ridiculous and playing with toys. That may be why I'm making a small regular income and they're not, it's beneath them to the point that they engage in neverending projects and goals :)
Thanks, I'm happy :) Do you still have any ST kit?
That was indeed very sparse. I remember seeing some problems with teh DMA bus - it was a bit fiddly (but that could have been the round cabling and the big DIN plug with too few ground pins...)
Unbelievable.
No, I gave it away a long time ago. I did repair it for a living as well. Got some official (quite informal) training as well.
It brings back nice memories. The first time Mac OS booted on it :)
I see it is probably kept alive by MIDI - is that correct?
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