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Post by jmpff3d on Nov 21, 2018 14:05:07 GMT
From: _@_.mil
Subject: Re: Real CBM 5 and 7.5MB hard drives!
Date: Tue Dec 31 13:45:28 EST 1996
Organization: ~
Carey Treesh wrote:
>
> Just wondering if anyone has or has ever had the CBM9060 or 9090 units?
> They are V E R Y rare. They are ture honnest too god hard disk drive
> units sold by commodore, with IEEE interface.
Yep. Ran a BBS off one.
> They use CBM dos V3.0 (load "$",8) and the 9060 unit had 18500 blocks free.
> (open 15,8,15,"n0:diskname,id low level format took 2 hours!)
>
> The 9060 was a very strange animial. It had a MFM 5 megabyte Tandom ST506
> whinchester. It was hooked too a very large interface board with about 75
> chips on it, whcih converted MFM too SASI (I still to this very day have
> no CLUE what the hell SASI is!!!) The SASI interface looked like a SCSI
> interface (50 pin ribbon)
It was an attempted standard before SCSI.
> It connected too the main commodore board with
> the typcial CBM PET style layout of a diskette controller board...rom chip
> for dos, 3 6502's, some 6522's, and one very good thing for its day, a
> red/green LED all in the same led! I dont think I ever saw this used
> before in 1980's equipment of the time.
I think there where two ROMs? One for high level DOS one for low level
disk access. I re-did them a long time back. It was to get 16
Megabytes by using a larger drive unit. Not to easy since most units
increase size by adding more cylinders. The ROM was limited to 256, if
I remember, and all the 'math' was based on this. I finally found a
Rodime drive that had more heads! This worked... a little hacking and
the old beast had tripple the storage. The other change I made was to
fix a bug these suckers have. They used the standard old CBM drive DOS
and kept trying to access drive 1! This would crash our BBS all the
time. Had to dig through and patch every place where that sneaky thing
would go off looking for the non-existed drive.
> I retrofitted switch mode power supllies into these things
> which cut the total weight in half.
Same here.
> A few years later I ended up getting the Lt. Kernal from Xtech, and had
> over 100megs of scsi disk space going thru it. (By the way, if you ever
> get a chance too get a Lt. Kernal hard disk system...DO IT! It kicks
> CMD's ASS all over the place!. (200 blocks per second in c64 mode!) DMA
> ALL THE WAY BABBY!
Sounds like my 1541 & Rapidos pro. 202 per sec! How weird living in a
world where the floppies are faster than the hard drives!
> ctfm
Sarg.
--
From: Fungus/MilleniuM <fungus@eskimo.com>
Subject: Re: Real CBM 5 and 7.5MB hard drives!
Date: Tue Dec 31 18:04:12 EST 1996
On 31 Dec 1996, Carey Treesh wrote:
> Just wondering if anyone has or has ever had the CBM9060 or 9090 units?
> They are V E R Y rare. They are ture honnest too god hard disk drive
> units sold by commodore, with IEEE interface.
>
> They use CBM dos V3.0 (load "$",8) and the 9060 unit had 18500 blocks free.
> (open 15,8,15,"n0:diskname,id low level format took 2 hours!)
>
> The 9060 was a very strange animial. It had a MFM 5 megabyte Tandom ST506
> whinchester. It was hooked too a very large interface board with about 75
> chips on it, whcih converted MFM too SASI (I still to this very day have
> no CLUE what the hell SASI is!!!) The SASI interface looked like a SCSI
> interface (50 pin ribbon) It connected too the main commodore board with
> the typcial CBM PET style layout of a diskette controller board...rom chip
> for dos, 3 6502's, some 6522's, and one very good thing for its day, a
> red/green LED all in the same led! I dont think I ever saw this used
> before in 1980's equipment of the time.
>
> The power suply unit (built in) was the analog type, with a MASSIVE
> transformer, and big honk'n capacitors. All the the units I got had
> problems, but using parts from each other I was able too make 2 of them
> work out of 3. I retrofitted switch mode power supllies into these things
> which cut the total weight in half. (nomral 5 meg unit as just over 15
> pounds!)
>
> I personally own two 9060's, but they are not in use. I MAY think about
> selling them, but you would proabaly have too offer me more then you want
> too, because I really dont wanna part with such a collectors item.
>
> They have worked with the Skyles IEEE FLASH product, and some funny serail
> too IEEE device called E-link that I once had. They are BUTT slow (285ms
> access time), but back in the 80's I was king of the hill having a total
> of 4 of these puppies running flagnet bbs. (and heating my house!)
>
> A few years later I ended up getting the Lt. Kernal from Xtech, and had
> over 100megs of scsi disk space going thru it. (By the way, if you ever
> get a chance too get a Lt. Kernal hard disk system...DO IT! It kicks
> CMD's ASS all over the place!. (200 blocks per second in c64 mode!) DMA
> ALL THE WAY BABBY!
>
>
> Another cool hard drive hardware project I did once was too put an
> internal scsi hard drive into a C128D. I had too pay tenex almost $80 for
> the 44pin cartridge extender cable (2 of them), and wraped it into the
> case of the C128D. I mounted the Xtech SCSI host adapter against the
> case, along with a small 40meg Qtuantum hard drive, and a small switch
> mode power suply. It was a heck of a project,but I had a self-contained
> C128D with internal 40meg bootable hard drive. I sold that unit for
> almost $1000 bucks years ago.
>
> ctfm
>
I had a D9090 and managed to get it to work after swaping mass chips and
fixing a few of the blown diodes on the controller board. I could never
get it to take a format... I wasn't sure if the mech was bad or I was just
not waiting long enough. I guess I didn' wait long enough if it took over
2 hours! hahah anyways.
As for a LTk HD, Yuck! Only 100 megs Gimmie 4 gigs! CMD rules! Besides
with the paralell I load desterm (over 260 blocks) in about 2.5 seconds!
so :P :)
--
From: crs0794@inforamp.net|no-spam (Geoffrey Welsh)
Subject: Re: Real CBM 5 and 7.5MB hard drives!
Date: Tue Dec 31 18:08:43 EST 1996
Organization: Izot's Swamp
On 31 Dec 1996 03:38:51 GMT, in comp.sys.cbm, ctreesh@pop.qtm.net
(Carey Treesh) wrote:
>Just wondering if anyone has or has ever had the CBM9060 or 9090 units?
>They are V E R Y rare. They are ture honnest too god hard disk drive
>units sold by commodore, with IEEE interface.
I'm pretty sure that Steve Douglas still has his; every year or so he
tells me that he switched it on and it still spins up. ,grin>
>The 9060 was a very strange animial. It had a MFM 5 megabyte Tandom ST506
>whinchester. It was hooked too a very large interface board with about 75
>chips on it, whcih converted MFM too SASI (I still to this very day have
>no CLUE what the hell SASI is!!!) The SASI interface looked like a SCSI
>interface (50 pin ribbon) It connected too the main commodore board with
SASI = Shugart Associates System Interface. Shugart Associates was a
disk drive supplier (some of their floppy drives were use in 2040 and
4040 drives) and, when Al Shugart sold his company and promised not to
start another one of the same name, he started one that's far better
known today: Seagate! I believe that SASI was a predecessor to SCSI,
and I've seen many people write that SCSI was also influenced by
IEEE-488 GPIB, but I've never looked inside a Commodore 90x0 and was
thus surprised to see you write that they used SASI inside; it would
have made far more sense for Commodore to do wthat they did with the
floppy drives: implement their own MFM controller with an IEEE-488
interface.
--
Geoffrey Welsh, MIS Co-ordinator, InSystems Technologies (gwelsh@insystems.com)
At home: xenitec.on.ca!zswamp!geoff; Temporary: crs0794@inforamp.net
"It ain't broke... it just lacks duct tape!" - Heard on the radio
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