Re: Mystery Cards

[nparker@cie-2.uoregon.edu (Neil Parker)]

In article <travis-2005962118210001@dream-king.cisco.com> travis@cluracan.org
(Ward C. Travis) writes:
>I have two unidentified Apple ][ - style expansion cards that I ask you to
>help me identify, if you would.
>
>The larger one is clearly a hard disk controller of some kind. The artwork
>on the board includes "S.V.A. APPLE DISK CONTROLLER" and "9�007�001", and
>the components include a two-row fifty-pin IDC connector at the back edge,
>a 4Mhz crystal, and a 40-pin DIP IC labelled "FD 1771-B01  7825 03", among
>other chips.

As the printing on the card suggests, this is almost certainly a disk
drive controller of some sort.  I doubt, however, that it's a hard disk
controller.

The name "S.V.A." sounded like something I read a long time ago in an ad
somewhere.  So I got out the ancient Softalk magazine collection, and sure
enough, there it was, in the very first issue I looked in.

"S.V.A." turns out to be "Sorrento Valley Associates."  Their ad in the
February 1982 issue of Softalk shows three 8-inch floppy drive systems, one
256K memory card, and one hard drive system.  I suppose your card could be
the hard drive controller, but I have a suspicion it's more likely to be
one of the 8-inch floppy controllers ("FD 1771-B01" sounds like a floppy
disk controller chip number to me).

The ad pictures show two controllers--the single-density controller and the
double-density controller.  Both are "full length" cards.

The single-density controller (called "Disk 2+2") appears to have a
ribbon-cable connector mounted vertically on the rear edge of the card.
The double-density controller (called "ZVX4 Megabyter") appears to have a
ribbon-cable connector mounted horizontally along the top edge of the card,
and also has a small "support" tab on the bottom edge, near the front.

There is no picture of the hard disk controller (just a picture of the hard
disk itself, opened up so you can see the platter).

Conclusion:  based on your description, what you have is probably a
controller for an IBM 3740 single-density 8-inch floppy disk drive (this
was the "standard" format for CP/M disks back in the olden days).

For whatever it's worth, S.V.A.'s address in 1982 was

     Sorrento Valley Associates
     11722 Sorrento Valley Road
     San Diego, CA 92121
     (714) 452-0101


I'm afraid I can't help with the thing that might be a video card.  I can't
find any mention of "Micro Works" in Softalk's advertiser index.

             - Neil Parker
-- 
Neil Parker, nparker@{cie-2,cie}.uoregon.edu, http://cie-2.uoregon.edu/~nparker

     "Evolution is vastly overrated."  -- Ambassador Delenn, _Babylon_5_