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Re: Daisychaining 5.25 " Drives



Don Bruder wrote:
In article <UIidnZ0empu7CpjYnZ2dnUVZ_q2dnZ2d@comcast.com>,
 "Bill Garber" <willy46pa@comcast.net> wrote:


"Mark Percival" <mark@syndicomm.com> wrote in message
1157993693.674164.148300@e3g2000cwe.googlegroups.com">news:1157993693.674164.148300@e3g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
:
: Robert O Greenawalt wrote:
: > Who knows the limit of daisychaining such drives with one controller
card?
:
: Two drives per card.  I'm not sure which 3rd party controller card Bill
: is refering to.
:
: Mark
:
: http://www.syndicomm.com/~mark/DM8/


The Rana drive controller was one that I know of,
but, that may have required Rana drives as well,
I am not sure exactly. I'd have to research that.


No research needed - Even with the Rana controller, a standard Apple-issue drive can't "pass along" to anything beyond drive 2 due to the wiring of the connectors/logic on the drive boards (not the controller card, but the drive boards)

The second connector on the second drive is effectively a "dead end", because the drive-select signal to turn on the second drive is "faked up" in logic by the board of the first drive prior to the signals being passed to the second connnector. Thus the second drive in the chain always sees either "nothing at all" or "They're talking to me". The first drive sees "They're talking to me", and the "faking up" process puts a "nothing at all" signal on the second connector. If the first drive sees a "We're NOT talking to you" signal, it fakes up the "We're talking to you" signal and puts it on the second connector, and the rest of the signals get routed to the second connector for drive 2 to play with.

No "faking up" is required.  Both drive select signals are present at
the 19-pin controller connector, and each daisy-chainable drive simply
acts on the "drive 1 select" and passes the "drive 2 select" on to the
"drive 1 select" output on its daisy-chain connector.

The Apple III first used this approach.

-michael

New, faster SUDOKU v2.0 solver for Apple II's!
Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/

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