Vintage Hardware

I have some pieces of old hardware (thanks go to Pest, yes, I know you wont ever read this but thank you anyways). It's funny how fast time passes along and how fast technology evolves). Just twenty years ago these things were marvels of technological progress and now it seems that noone knows anything about them.
If you know something about this hardware, identified it, have any documentation (user guides, jumper setting tables, schematics or something else) please write to me - you'll get into the Hall Of Fame, History will know your name! :)

So, lets get going. First thing is an MFM harddrive, its capacity is 20MB and its geometry is either 612/4/17 or 615/4/17 (thanks to Elar from Vintage Computer Forum for info).



Next thing is MPC-172A REV1.1 the ISA 8-bit MFM controller card, produced presumably by Morse Technologies company. It's build on Adaptec AIC-300, Adaptec AIC-010 and Adaptec AIC-250 chips. BIOS chips are labeled with M0RSE stickers. With current jumper setting (on top-left and bottom-right) BIOS is mapped to C800:0000.
Although there is no documentation for this card available, there is more or less complete information about its Adaptec chips. The card is similiar to Adaptec ACB-2002.



And at last an ISA 16-bit combo MFM/FDD controller card. Main chips are WDC WD1010A-PL and Zilog Z765APS. Zilog chip is known to work, and J12 connector is known to be floppy interface connector (I was really amazed that chip from 1986 worked with 1.44 FDD. At that time, as I remember, most common drives were 5 inch 360KB and 720KB ones, at least in the country where I live). J2, J3, J4 are standard connectors for 2 MFM drives. BIOS is either disabled or mapped to not known yet location.



Thats all for now. Be the first to tell me something about these marvels :)

This page was last modified on 8 Feb 2023