What's inside my ATR8000?

[joeventura]

Just bought an ATR8000 (already have one with CoPower) off Ebay and like any good geek opened it up immediately.

 

It seems every one I open looks different.

 

I found a few images online like such:

 

 

 

and then what I have inside mine is this:

 

 

 

Wondering if anyone can provide any insight as to what a Z-TEC 1000 is and what the edge connector does.

 

Thanks

[+Larry]

Just bought an ATR8000 (already have one with CoPower) off Ebay and like any good geek opened it up immediately.

 

Wondering if anyone can provide any insight as to what a Z-TEC 1000 is and what the edge connector does.

 

Thanks

 

Hard Drive interface. 50-pin SCSI connector. I had two with these in them. Unfortunately, it requires a nearly-impossible-to-find MFM drive bridge board and a so-far-impossible-to-find version of MyDos in order to work. IIRC, an Atari partition must be set up inside a CP/M formatted HD, and the special version of MyDos is required to recognize it and communicate. Don't remember the exact bridge board required, but the MyDos is 3.13b. The "b" is the version for the ATR8000 HD. The author of MyDos no longer had a copy of this version. I tried to set up a CP/M hard drive using an Adaptec 4000 board, but the Z-TEC would have none of that.

 

Of course it would be very unique, but a HD operating at 19Kbs would be no faster than SIO2PC/APE at 1X (sour grapes) .

 

-Larry

[joeventura]

Knew I would find the answer here,

So its an ATR8000HD ? Hehehhehe

 

Sounds like this will never be solved since both needed components are near impossible to find.

 

Even if you found the version of Mydos it probably requires the bridge board keeping you from doing it straight SCSI.

 

Oh well.

 

 

Thanks for the info.

[joeventura]

There was just an auction on EBay:

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...em=190203152556

 

Looks like there was an impossible to find board,

and when I inquired about the software that came with it I got this reply:

 

1. mydos 3.316 update

2. mydos 3.316 autoload

3. 80 col pgm for ATR8000

4. ATR8000 cp/m update with hard disk utils

5. mydos 3.316 autoload for hard disk system

6. ATR8000 auto-term

 

Seems to me that the aforementioned Mydos may be in that bundle.

 

What do you think?

 

 

 

 

 

Just bought an ATR8000 (already have one with CoPower) off Ebay and like any good geek opened it up immediately.

 

Wondering if anyone can provide any insight as to what a Z-TEC 1000 is and what the edge connector does.

 

Thanks

 

Hard Drive interface. 50-pin SCSI connector. I had two with these in them. Unfortunately, it requires a nearly-impossible-to-find MFM drive bridge board and a so-far-impossible-to-find version of MyDos in order to work. IIRC, an Atari partition must be set up inside a CP/M formatted HD, and the special version of MyDos is required to recognize it and communicate. Don't remember the exact bridge board required, but the MyDos is 3.13b. The "b" is the version for the ATR8000 HD. The author of MyDos no longer had a copy of this version. I tried to set up a CP/M hard drive using an Adaptec 4000 board, but the Z-TEC would have none of that.

 

Of course it would be very unique, but a HD operating at 19Kbs would be no faster than SIO2PC/APE at 1X (sour grapes) .

 

-Larry

[atarifan49]

By the way, that hard drive interface is a SASI...not SCSI. SASI = Shugart Associates System Interface. The precursor to SCSI.

 

You'll want to find a Xebec interface card for it. I don't recall the equivalent Adaptec interface that did SASI.

 

Glenn

[Defender II]

Yes, it is hard enough to find MFM and RLL interface boards. It will be almost impossible to get an actual SASI. IIRC SASI is very close to SCSI tho.

[MEtalGuy66]

Yes, it is hard enough to find MFM and RLL interface boards. It will be almost impossible to get an actual SASI. IIRC SASI is very close to SCSI tho.

 

I have an actual Shugart (brand name) 10-meg MFM drive sitting here.. The model number is SA712

 

Both the Adaptec ACB-4000A (MFM-SCSI BRIDGE) and ACB-4070 (RLL-SCSI BRIDGE) will work with SCSI or SASI. Just install a jumper on the "I-J" position on J5. You would normally leave this jumper off in a standard SCSI system, but if your interface is SASI, you install this jumper and the Adaptec board will recognize the addtional commands from the SASI command set that were different in SCSI.

 

Also, in addition to the XEBEC 1410 MFM-SCSI bridge, there was a later model called the XEBEC 11410A. Not sure what the difference/improvements were between these two models.

 

Also, evidently Phillip Price did not think much of XEBEC.. Maybe his blew up or something, while he was working on Alternate Reality: The City. He named it "The City of XEBEC's demise."

Edited March 22, 2008 by MEtalGuy66

[OldAtarian]

I have found a vintage computer guy locally who agreed to sell me two Xebec controllers he had lying around but they are a little bit different from each other. Not really sure which one will work best but they both seem to have the important pins and ports for hooking up to. Does anyone have a specific part number of Xebec controller that is known to work in an ATR8000? I also managed to source a Tandon TM100 cheap so I hope that works with it.

[OldAtarian]

Yes, it is hard enough to find MFM and RLL interface boards. It will be almost impossible to get an actual SASI. IIRC SASI is very close to SCSI tho.

 

I have an actual Shugart (brand name) 10-meg MFM drive sitting here.. The model number is SA712

 

Both the Adaptec ACB-4000A (MFM-SCSI BRIDGE) and ACB-4070 (RLL-SCSI BRIDGE) will work with SCSI or SASI. Just install a jumper on the "I-J" position on J5. You would normally leave this jumper off in a standard SCSI system, but if your interface is SASI, you install this jumper and the Adaptec board will recognize the addtional commands from the SASI command set that were different in SCSI.

 

Also, in addition to the XEBEC 1410 MFM-SCSI bridge, there was a later model called the XEBEC 11410A. Not sure what the difference/improvements were between these two models.

 

Also, evidently Phillip Price did not think much of XEBEC.. Maybe his blew up or something, while he was working on Alternate Reality: The City. He named it "The City of XEBEC's demise."

 

The difference is the 1410 can only use one bus ID which would be 0. The 1410A can be jumpered to select other bus ID's.

Edited October 2, 2010 by OldAtarian

[joeventura]

Yes, it is hard enough to find MFM and RLL interface boards. It will be almost impossible to get an actual SASI. IIRC SASI is very close to SCSI tho.

 

I have an actual Shugart (brand name) 10-meg MFM drive sitting here.. The model number is SA712

 

Both the Adaptec ACB-4000A (MFM-SCSI BRIDGE) and ACB-4070 (RLL-SCSI BRIDGE) will work with SCSI or SASI. Just install a jumper on the "I-J" position on J5. You would normally leave this jumper off in a standard SCSI system, but if your interface is SASI, you install this jumper and the Adaptec board will recognize the addtional commands from the SASI command set that were different in SCSI.

 

Also, in addition to the XEBEC 1410 MFM-SCSI bridge, there was a later model called the XEBEC 11410A. Not sure what the difference/improvements were between these two models.

 

Also, evidently Phillip Price did not think much of XEBEC.. Maybe his blew up or something, while he was working on Alternate Reality: The City. He named it "The City of XEBEC's demise."

 

 

 

What about this Xebec Adapter?

 

eBay Auction -- Item Number: 140517518783

[fibrewire]

If any drive will work, it's this drive. I was saving it for myself, but now that it's listed here... I can be outbid by $0.50.

 

eBay Auction -- Item Number: 390295930872

 

For those of you with knowledge of MFM drives, this is THE hard disk!

[joeventura]

If any drive will work, it's this drive. I was saving it for myself, but now that it's listed here... I can be outbid by $0.50.

 

eBay Auction -- Item Number: 390295930872

 

For those of you with knowledge of MFM drives, this is THE hard disk!

 

Well its certainly the original. I remember my first one.

[OldAtarian]

Yes, it is hard enough to find MFM and RLL interface boards. It will be almost impossible to get an actual SASI. IIRC SASI is very close to SCSI tho.

 

I have an actual Shugart (brand name) 10-meg MFM drive sitting here.. The model number is SA712

 

Both the Adaptec ACB-4000A (MFM-SCSI BRIDGE) and ACB-4070 (RLL-SCSI BRIDGE) will work with SCSI or SASI. Just install a jumper on the "I-J" position on J5. You would normally leave this jumper off in a standard SCSI system, but if your interface is SASI, you install this jumper and the Adaptec board will recognize the addtional commands from the SASI command set that were different in SCSI.

 

Also, in addition to the XEBEC 1410 MFM-SCSI bridge, there was a later model called the XEBEC 11410A. Not sure what the difference/improvements were between these two models.

 

Also, evidently Phillip Price did not think much of XEBEC.. Maybe his blew up or something, while he was working on Alternate Reality: The City. He named it "The City of XEBEC's demise."

 

 

 

What about this Xebec Adapter?

 

eBay Auction -- Item Number: 140517518783

 

 

Holy crap that's a lot of money. I paid $75 for TWO Xebec boards not long after I made my original post in this thread and got a photocopied manual with them.

[joeventura]

If any drive will work, it's this drive. I was saving it for myself, but now that it's listed here... I can be outbid by $0.50.

 

eBay Auction -- Item Number: 390295930872

 

For those of you with knowledge of MFM drives, this is THE hard disk!

 

 

LOL I bought it!

[joeventura]

SO Now I have the ST506,

The Adaptec 4000

 

Where is the elusive copy of MYDOS that will run it all?

[sloopy]

uh... what is commonly called a 'MFM' interface is more a ST412 then a ST506... the ST506 was released first, and then they found issues with it, so modified it, learned how to make a 10MB drive, and released the ST412...

 

 

sloopy.

[fibrewire]

i know that, but saying "MFM" is cooler than "ST506/ST412" - Kinda like saying "Cloud" is cooler than "High Availability/High Reliability/Virtualizaton Stack"

 

Obfuscation