Date   : Wed, 11 Jan 2006 00:11:21 +0000
From   : Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk@...>
Subject: Re: eBay What is this?

Andrew Hancock wrote:
> Anyone got any clues as to what this item is?
> 
> Just curious, wasn't going to bid on it. Honest!
> 
> <http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/BBC-Micro-Computer-20meg-Hard-Disk-Controller-Board_W
> 0QQitemZ8250095905QQcategoryZ50217QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem>
> 
> Looks late on because of the Master logo on the box?

Hmmm, interesting.

The 'controller board' is a Xebec SCSI-ST506 bridge board, designed to allow 
ST506 interface drives to hook up to systems with a SCSI (or SASI) bus. It's 
*not* an Acorn SCSI/Winchester controller (incidentally, if I remember right, 
Acorn used an Adaptec bridge board along with their SCSI interface)

The hard disk is the interesting bit. Cumana made a second processor for the 
BBC with a 68008 CPU on board, capable of running OS-9 - it sounds like this 
is what this drive came from. Possibly one of the rarest second processors 
made for the BBC.

The Cumana board has a built-in SASI disk interface; this would connect to 
that hard drive via the Xebec bridge board.

In historical terms, the drive's reasonably interesting for whatever data it 
has on it (assuming it still works) - Cumana coprocessors are not exactly 
around in big numbers, so it'd be interesting to see what work it was used for.

The big shame is that there's no mention of the copro to go with the drive and 
board (it's unusual in that it lives inside the host BBC's case) as that would 
be a significant find.

If I had an EBay account (and paypal or wahtever) I might be tempted to go for 
this. Hopefully whoever does will make some effort to get the OS-9 data off 
the disk first before formatting it!

cheers

Jules