On Thu, 11 Feb 2021, Paul Berger via cctalk wrote:
I do seem recall using ESDI drives in a PC with 16 bit ISA slots but it is
a long time ago but I am not sure if the controller used was the RT
controller you have pictured, it seems to me the one used was a Western
Digital controller.
On 2021-02-11 6:35 p.m., Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
The most likely ISA ESDI would be the WD1007 controller.
There were a few variant submodels of that, such as with/without floppy
support, w/wo BIOS ROM.
http://www.minuszerodegrees.net/manuals/Western%20Digital/WD1007A-WAH%20and%20WA2%20-%20Users%20Guide.pdf
Mine had the ROM. On one machine, I had a 200M 3.5" drive. My first
drive of that size of both capacity and physical size.
I think that I know where it is.
On Thu, 11 Feb 2021, Paul Berger via cctalk wrote:
No that is not it the one I used was a full length controller, but unlike the
RT controller that was pictured it did not have an IBM square aluminum can
chip on it, but it was probably at least 30 years ago so I don't recall any
more. By the time I left the Toronto Lab where I had almost all my exposure
to RTs I was already using SCSI disks in my PC.
There certainly were many others.
The WD1007 that I was using (also about 30 years ago, and certainly well
over 20 years since I turned any of that group of machines on) was a full
length ISA board.
Some later WD1007 [sub]models were physically a lot smaller.
I think that Western Digital assigned some variant of "WD1007" with
various suffixes as the name for all of the ISA ESDI controllers that
they made.
A controller sold by IBM would be rebadged with IBM's own model number,
and maybe even their own ROM, etc.
For example, IBM's HD controller for XT/5160 was a rebadged Xebec;
I think that IBM's HD controller for AT/5170 was a rebadged WD1002.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com
