• 26 pin MFM drive

    From philo@21:1/5 to All on Fri Nov 5 15:08:40 2021
    In my box of obsolete computer parts, I found a JVC LD3824R00-1 20
    Meg MFM drive. It has a 26 pin connector and no separate power pins.


    No idea where it came from. Does anyone know anything about this drive?


    It's the same size as a standard IDE drive.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul@21:1/5 to philo on Fri Nov 5 19:09:23 2021
    On 11/5/2021 4:08 PM, philo wrote:
    In my box of obsolete computer parts, I found a JVC   LD3824R00-1   20 Meg MFM drive. It has a 26 pin connector and no separate power pins.


    No idea where it came from. Does anyone know anything about this drive?


    It's the same size as a standard IDE drive.

    The disk drive industry, must have been a train wreck
    at some point. There used to be a lot of disk drive companies.
    JVC was one of them (so not just a rebranding exercise).
    At first I thought, if it was made by someone else, we'd
    need to figure out who that was.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_hard_disk_manufacturers

    *******

    Badcaps.net has a thread for this. This is the text from the PDF
    file in one of the attachments---

    The JVC JD-3824R00-1 harddisk

    This is the internal hard disk of a Toshiba T-3100. It uses a
    custom interface, probably similar to the ST-506 harddisk interface,
    but fewer pins. Both signals and power are combined in one 26 header.

    Other machines using this type of hard disk interface:

    Epson PX-16
    Epson Equity LT
    Epson Portable PC (Q150A)
    Sharp PC-7200
    Data General One Model 2T ?
    GRiDCase 3 Plus
    Toshiba T1200 ?
    Wang WLTC Laptop

    3. Parameters (2 heads, 34 sectors, 615 cylinders)
    4. 2-7 RLL coding
    5. Spindle Rotation: 2597 rpm
    6. Data Transfer: 7.5M bps
    7. Average Access: 78ms
    8. Power Voltage: 5V and 12V

    This is the controller from the Toshiba T-3100. The chip numbers are: T7518 (large one), DC2090P166A
    (smaller one), TC57256AD-20 (EPROM). All are of the Toshiba brand.

    Pin 1 GND (20- 2) Pin 2 -Read Data (20-18)
    Pin 3 GND (20- 4) Pin 4 -Write Data (20-14)
    Pin 5 GND (20- 6) Pin 6 Reserved
    Pin 7 -Drive Select/+Power Save (-) Pin 8 -Ship Ready (-)
    Pin 9 GND (20- 8) Pin 10 +Read/-Write control (34- 6)
    Pin 11 -Motor On (-) Pin 12 Head Select(+Head 0/ - Head1) (34-14)
    Pin 13 -Direction In (34-34) Pin 14 -Step (32-24)
    Pin 15 -Write Fault (34-12) Pin 16 -Seek Complete (34- 8)
    Pin 17 -Servo Gate (-) Pin 18 -Index (34-20)
    Pin 19 -Track 000 (34-10) Pin 20 -Drive Ready (34-22)
    Pin 21 GND (20-11) Pin 22 +5V (-)
    Pin 23 GND (20-12) Pin 24 +5V (-)
    Pin 25 GND (20-15) Pin 26 +12V (-)

    The signals have the same name as the ST-412/ST-506 interface (between'()'), but the read/write signal is not differential.

    *******

    This is the badcaps.net page where I got the PDF dump in
    the previous section.

    https://badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=64108

    The two JPGs. Reposted via Postimage.
    Use the "Download original" to get full res (3000x1688 using bad quality lens).

    One is a picture of the Toshiba adapter board, which
    appears to convert from one useless standard (26 pin) to
    another useless standard (34 pin). It was popular in those
    days, to throw a thousand dollars worth of electronics
    at a simple serial stream. Mainly, because the boards
    might be available in some catalog, and you "just buy them"
    rather than wasting time on more engineering effort.

    https://i.postimg.cc/VvynLk0b/20170824-190914.jpg

    https://i.postimg.cc/VLWnm1fd/20170824-190846.jpg

    One of my guys at work did that. That's why my best
    guess at the design, is it was a "catalog engineering job",
    joining one defacto standard to another.

    Paul

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From philo@21:1/5 to Paul on Sat Nov 6 06:03:44 2021
    On 11/5/21 6:09 PM, Paul wrote:
    On 11/5/2021 4:08 PM, philo wrote:
    In my box of obsolete computer parts, I found a JVC   LD3824R00-1   20 >> Meg MFM drive. It has a 26 pin connector and no separate power pins.


    No idea where it came from. Does anyone know anything about this drive?


    It's the same size as a standard IDE drive.

    The disk drive industry, must have been a train wreck
    at some point. There used to be a lot of disk drive companies.
    JVC was one of them (so not just a rebranding exercise).
    At first I thought, if it was made by someone else, we'd
    need to figure out who that was.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_hard_disk_manufacturers

    *******

    Badcaps.net has a thread for this. This is the text from the PDF
    file in one of the attachments---

    The JVC JD-3824R00-1 harddisk

    This is the internal hard disk of a Toshiba T-3100. It uses a
    custom interface, probably similar to the ST-506 harddisk interface,
    but fewer pins. Both signals and power are combined in one 26 header.

    Other machines using this type of hard disk interface:

    Epson PX-16
    Epson Equity LT
    Epson Portable PC (Q150A)
    Sharp PC-7200
    Data General One Model 2T ?
    GRiDCase 3 Plus
    Toshiba T1200 ?
    Wang WLTC Laptop

    3. Parameters (2 heads, 34 sectors, 615 cylinders)
    4. 2-7 RLL coding
    5. Spindle Rotation: 2597 rpm
    6. Data Transfer: 7.5M bps
    7. Average Access: 78ms
    8. Power Voltage: 5V and 12V

    This is the controller from the Toshiba T-3100. The chip numbers are:
    T7518 (large one), DC2090P166A
    (smaller one), TC57256AD-20 (EPROM). All are of the Toshiba brand.

    Pin 1 GND (20- 2)                   Pin 2 -Read Data (20-18)
    Pin 3 GND (20- 4)                   Pin 4 -Write Data (20-14)
    Pin 5 GND (20- 6)                   Pin 6  Reserved
    Pin 7 -Drive Select/+Power Save (-) Pin 8 -Ship Ready (-)
    Pin 9 GND (20- 8)                   Pin 10 +Read/-Write control (34- 6)
    Pin 11 -Motor On (-)                Pin 12 Head Select(+Head 0/ - Head1)
    (34-14)
    Pin 13 -Direction In (34-34)        Pin 14 -Step (32-24)
    Pin 15 -Write Fault (34-12)         Pin 16 -Seek Complete (34- 8)
    Pin 17 -Servo Gate (-)              Pin 18 -Index (34-20)
    Pin 19 -Track 000 (34-10)           Pin 20 -Drive Ready (34-22)
    Pin 21 GND (20-11)                  Pin 22 +5V (-)
    Pin 23 GND (20-12)                  Pin 24 +5V (-)
    Pin 25 GND (20-15)                  Pin 26 +12V (-)

    The signals have the same name as the ST-412/ST-506 interface
    (between'()'),
    but the read/write signal is not differential.

    *******

    This is the badcaps.net page where I got the PDF dump in
    the previous section.

    https://badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=64108

    The two JPGs. Reposted via Postimage.
    Use the "Download original" to get full res (3000x1688 using bad quality lens).

    One is a picture of the Toshiba adapter board, which
    appears to convert from one useless standard (26 pin) to
    another useless standard (34 pin). It was popular in those
    days, to throw a thousand dollars worth of electronics
    at a simple serial stream. Mainly, because the boards
    might be available in some catalog, and you "just buy them"
    rather than wasting time on more engineering effort.

       https://i.postimg.cc/VvynLk0b/20170824-190914.jpg

       https://i.postimg.cc/VLWnm1fd/20170824-190846.jpg

    One of my guys at work did that. That's why my best
    guess at the design, is it was a "catalog engineering job",
    joining one defacto standard to another.

         Paul



    Thanks Paul.

    I shall keep the drive in my collection of oddities but will never know
    if it's working or if there is any data on it.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)