Date   : Mon, 07 Nov 1983 03:53:51 CST
From   : Stan Hanks <stan.rice@rand-relay>
Subject: FDC's for truly ancient S100 machines

A friend of mine recently acquired an ancient IMSAI in the throes of
decrepitude. Rather than pitch the CPU and re-populate the bus, he has
elected to retain the current card set and "enhance" it. Problem with
this particular machine is that it has no FDC; the current mass storage
is a Tarbell cassette interfacer board (remember when that was about as
good as a home hacker could do?? sigh....)

Anyway, as this is a pre-696 machine, he is wondering what controller
he can attach to it without having to really modify either the FDC or
the CPU/memory/whatever. The optimal solution will be a 5.25/8
controller that will do everything from SSSD to DSDD; he will settle
for 8 inch DSDD. BIOS for CP/M 2.2 is helpful but not required if
sufficient documentation is available.

Any help will be greatly appreciated. Please reply directly to me; I'll
summarize to the list if sufficient response is made. Thanks much!


                               Stan Hanks
                               Department of Computer Science
                               Rice University
                               Houston TX
                               
                               stan.rice@rand-relay   (arpanet)
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