Re: Hard Drive Help

[chiu@ucsee.Berkeley.EDU (David Chiu)]

In article <1993Apr21.134659.1673@relay.nswc.navy.mil> jemorti@relay.nswc.navy.mil (Jack Mortimer - K31) writes:
>In article <1993Apr20.182640.4968@nic.csu.net>, rmallory@silicon.csci.csusb.edu (Rob Mallory) writes:
>|>  ---On the topic of Siders, anyone know what kinda drive it _Really_ is?

>I have read that the early ones were SASI but can not confirm that.

If I remember correctly, Siders came in two flavors; SCSI and SASI.
All the earlier Siders were SASI based and some later Siders were SCSI
(after Apple introduced SCSI card)

Early SASI drives were in fact Xebec 1410 SASI to MFM controller coupled
with *CHEAP* MFM drives (anything from Seagate to Tandon, when Tandon still
makes hard drives) Later drives may use imbedded SASI controller, but I
cannot confirm that since I haven not come across one.

The Xebec 1410 used in Siders had special ROMs with drive charcteristics
hard coded into it, thereby permitting it to boot. Standard Xebec 1410
requires the host to feed it the drive characteristics before  it will
do anything with the drive.