OK, I think I have figured it out. Reading my own web site entry more carefully for Northstar….! The original FDC was called the MDC-FDC board. It was single density 10 hard sectors/track on a 5” disk. They later came out with a double density version called the MDS-FDC board. Still 10 sectors track on a 5” disk but now the sectors were 512 bytes/sector rather than 256. No Western digital 17xx chip either, all done with discrete 74XX chips. Sorry for the earlier confusion John From: n8vem...@googlegroups.com [mailto:n8vem...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Monahan It’s a long time ago Philip! You may be right. I thought they came out with a soft sectored FDC towards the end. The one I’m thinking of had physical wires running across top front of the board to the disk cable connector. (Looked like a bit of a kludge). I may be confusing it with somebody else. Does anybody else out there remember. I did notice that the S100Computers.com section on NorthStar page needs correcting as the hard sectored FDC is listed 2X. Updating these boards never ends! John John Monahan Ph.D e-mail: mon...@vitasoft.org Text: mon...@txt.att.net From: n8vem...@googlegroups.com [mailto:n8vem...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Nama Are you sure? As far as I have been able to find out, all their FDC's were all hard sectored. I think the reference to the 179x controller IC in the article you referenced is talking about competitors hardware. Maybe I'm wrong. I often am. Phil
Not so, they made two very different FDC’s, the early ones were for hard sectored 5” disks, the later FDC was 179x driven for 8’ & 5” soft sectored disks. See here:- http://www.s100computers.com/Hardware%20Folder/Northstar/History/History.htm John John Monahan Ph.D e-mail: mon...@vitasoft.org Text: mon...@txt.att.net From: n8ve...@googlegroups.com [mailto:n8ve...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Nama Hi everyone, This may be a long shot, but I'm in need of a Northstar S-100 floppy disk controller card. They made a few different models, but I think anything is fine for my needs. Much thanks in advance Philip -- -- -- |