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ibm esdi controller card needed

1

1ajs

Experienced Member
Joined
May 27, 2005
Messages
452
Location
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
hi got a ibm esdi drive with 40pin and 34 pin cable coming off it i can't find a controllor card out there for it? anyone got one?

i resqued a ibm ps2 model 50 thinking it might have what i need only to find the wrong style of esdi in it agg o well

theres software i would like to resque of this drive for some industrial equitment i have


esdi.jpg
 
IBM PS/2 controllers tend to use special cables (slots for a connector not pins). PS/2 systems tended to have slid in edge connectors for IBM drives that were not SCSI. Where did you get that drive, what model is it, and where are you trying to install it?
 
If it's what I think it is, it's going to be 'DBA ESDI'. I have one such drive in the closet.

It's very much dependent on MCA if I understand correctly (something along the lines of the drive plugging right into the bus?).

Some models had SCSI, some models had completely unique proprietary interfaces never used anywhere else (25/30), and then some had this beast.

Edit: I might have this backwards. This is what the PS/2 you got is likely to have; the drive is apparently something different.
 
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Hmmm..."regular" ESDI drives have 34 and 20 position cables, somewhat like MFM drives. I'm not sure what kind of controller would connect to your drive.
 
the drive was removed from a ge workmaster 2

drives.jpg



theres 2 types of esdi. narrow and wide my cable is an odd ball one

the ps2 model 50 has a narrow style with 20 meg drive in it and prolly has accounting software on it or something to run a pipeline terminal
 
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Chuck(G) said:
Hmmm..."regular" ESDI drives have 34 and 20 position cables, somewhat like MFM drives. I'm not sure what kind of controller would connect to your drive.
Click to expand...

In this case, specifically to the "DBA ESDI" controller of the PS/2 P70 planar. The drive itself will otherwise go into a Model 50Z, 55SX (there is a 72-pin edge connector cable), or 70. The ESDI drives of the Model 60 and Model 80 are conventional (5-1/4" chassis) units.
 
IBMMuseum said:
In this case, specifically to the "DBA ESDI" controller of the PS/2 P70 planar. The drive itself will otherwise go into a Model 50Z, 55SX (there is a 72-pin edge connector cable), or 70. The ESDI drives of the Model 60 and Model 80 are conventional (5-1/4" chassis) units.
Click to expand...

Ah, so not what the rest of the world thinks of as "ESDI". Clearly not the bit-serial 10MHz clock type of ESDI that I'm used to.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Ah, so not what the rest of the world thinks of as "ESDI". Clearly not the bit-serial 10MHz clock type of ESDI that I'm used to.
Click to expand...

"DBA" is "Direct Bus Attachment", so to clarify my comment, the "controller" is on the drive itself. They were in a 3-1/2" form-factor, and had a 72-pin connection that had power and data signals. It was the proprietary drive interface (and limited to a single drive) that IBM commonly used in early PS/2s, until they were supplanted by SCSI.
 
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Basically what you're asking for is an MCA to ISA bus adapter (as IBMMuseum confirmed, it isn't ESDI, it's DBA ESDI, which pretty much is MCA, the 'card' you seek is built into the drive)...and I kind of doubt such a thing exists, or if it does, that it works remotely properly.
 
kishy said:
Basically what you're asking for is an MCA to ISA bus adapter (as IBMMuseum confirmed, it isn't ESDI, it's DBA ESDI, which pretty much is MCA, the 'card' you seek is built into the drive)...and I kind of doubt such a thing exists, or if it does, that it works remotely properly.
Click to expand...

Correct, even to adapt the drive to his Model 50 (non-'Z') you need a riser (not hard to find, and it is just a PCB that takes many of the 16-bit microchannel bus to the drive), and to burn the 50Z BIOS (two chips) to the 50-021 (four BIOS chips) he has. Support is in the system BIOS (like IDE), and different from ISA implementations IBM or anyone else did. The cable he has is furthermore only for the P70 (and the rebranded system he shows).
 
IBMMuseum said:
"DBA" is "Direct Bus Attachment", so to clarify my comment, the "controller" is on the drive itself. They were in a 3-1/2" form-factor, and had a 72-pin connection that had power and data signals. It was the proprietary drive interface (and limited to a single drive) that IBM commonly used in early PS/2s, until they were supplanted by SCSI.
Click to expand...

In other words, the MCA version of IDE (which itself is little more than an ESDI controller integrated onto the drive with an ISA bus attachment).

These acronyms can be misleading.
 
Chuck(G) said:
In other words, the MCA version of IDE (which itself is little more than an ESDI controller integrated onto the drive with an ISA bus attachment)...
Click to expand...

Exactly, there is even a rare cable that adapted the Thinkpad 700/700C/720/720C (which were based on microchannel) DBA ESDI connection to a laptop IDE drive: http://ibmmuseum.com/ohlandl/9552/9552_Common.html (you had to have a modified system BIOS they supplied, so it wasn't adaptable to other microchannel DBA ESDI systems)...

All told, here are the IBM systems having a DBA ESDI connection, with notes:

PS/2 Model 50Z (not the 50-021, which has a proprietary 20Mb MFM drive)
PS/2 Models N51SX and N51SLC (laptop form-factor drive)
PS/2 Model 53SLC2 (unused, as there is planar IDE)
PS/2 Model 55SX
PS/2 Model CL57SX (laptop form-factor drive)
PS/2 Model 70
PS/2 Model P70
PS/2 Model 90 (8590 has two artifact connectors for DBA ESDI drives, connections removed on 9590, unused as SCSI adapter is installed)
Thinkpad 700/700C/720/720C (laptop form-factor drive)

DBA ESDI drive sizes are 30, 40, 60, 80, 100, 120, and 160Mb, at least for the 3-1/2" form-factor drives, and capacities can be interchanged on any non-laptop DBA ESDI system. Since the drive couples to the microchannel bus, an ADF on the Reference Diskette of the system is needed to initially configure it to run the drive. The Reference Diskette also has hidden utilities to low-level format the drives.
 
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Chuck(G) said:
Was the DBA ESDI limited to the x86 platform or did it make it into any RS/6000 boxes?
Click to expand...

There is a seemingly unused connector that looks very much like DBA ESDI on the IBM XStation 130, but that strange beast (otherwise with a single 16-bit microchannel slot that only recognizes two adapters, because the ADFs are hard-coded in the system ROM) has an 80C186 CPU. I'm certainly not familiar with all RS/6000 systems, the drive, if present, would be the older microchannel-based systems. Here is a pinout if you are interested: http://ibmmuseum.com/ohlandl/misc/IBM_IDE.html#IBM_MCA_IDE (with Louis Ohland referencing it as "IBM IDE" here).
 
theres a 70 on fleabay with error codes 201, 221, 301, 164 . i read ur manual link ibmmuseum about the Manichean but the definitions of some of the codes leave me rather confused
 
Further material for study are here, and the more-standardized ESDI of the Model 60 and 80 are shown above that. The origins of the PS/2 Model 53SLC2 are that a company called Reply made a "systemboard upgrade" for the 55SX, so popular that IBM rebranded it as a separate system. Even though it had planar IDE, the DBA ESDI interface (connected at the top of a three microchannel adapter riser) was still functional (other vendors did riser replacements for both Model 50s, and the 55SX, to give IDE rather than DBA ESDI).

In fact I have tried the Model 50Z riser in other non-DBA ESDI systems that are microchannel (but not with a processor complex, like the Model 90 and 95), with the drive fully functional as long as I added the ADF when configuring the system. On the 8590 (with two DBA ESDI artifact connections), I was able to work with the drive, but not to boot from it. Model 90 and 95 systems have a SCSI adapter stock, and can have a boot sequence that depends which "slot" resource the adapter is in (consumer microchannel is limited to eight adapter slots, with some of the system planar functions sometime using a defined "slot" location, like when XGA video or SCSI is put on the system planar).

Clearing things up, or making them more muddy?... :)
 
sorta

put an offer in on the 70 sitting on fleabay see if they take it being they want 200bucks for the ge version

still its facinating
 
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