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Mystery Machine

DougM

DougM

Experienced Member
Joined
Apr 19, 2023
Messages
209
Location
Bellevue, WA
I'm new to this forum and I'm stunned that I didn't find it earlier, but I finally think maybe I've found my people.

Anyway, just for fun I want to see if I can stump @Chuck(G) since someone said:

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Do you seriously know everything about PCs- hardware and software? I'm half-convinced that you do. I think I've yet to see a thread where you don't know the answer :p (maybe I should look harder?)!
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So here we go,
IMG_0335.JPG

DougM
 
Without a doubt that's a product from Intel's iPDS (intel Processor Development System)/Intellec line. Multibus in nature.
 
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Looks familiar. Intel MDS80 Series 2. The drive box looks like one used with the MDS800, but the drive interface was standard.
Intellec-MDS-80--Museum-Enter-6094735.jpg

In our shop, the MDS-800 was the primary development system, with the Series 2 (MDS 225) used as backup. They both take the same Multibus cards.
 
Thanks for playing! You folks are exactly correct of course - it's an MDS-220.

I've never tried to fire it up but I might even have the boot disks for it - I have a rather large collection of 8" floppies, though I don't have the cables for the external floppy drives. It would be a good project for someone to pull all the bits off those floppies and get them up on the Internets somewhere - any volunteers?

IMG_0337.JPG

All of this stuff was destined for the Dumpster when I picked it up, but I never did anything with it aside from the paper tape punch.
 
Does the integrated drive (part of the monitor assembly) not work? Or is the cable to that one missing too?

My recollection of the Series 2 boxes is that they contained an 8271 FDC and could do FM (IBM 3740) only. There was a 2-board set based on 3000-series bit-slice logic that could do MMFM; perhaps that's what the external drives were about. This is all from about 45+ years ago, so I may be remembering wrong. We also built up do-it-yourself MDS using the Intel CPU cards and an Intel Multibus card cage. I believe that we cloned the PROMs from the MDS800 for it.
 
The floppy cables are detailied in the attached documents. If you want to attach directly to the 8" drives it's quite easy with my SA800 reproduction PCB. Have a look at my video here

Adapter Card Video

All of it can be done with simple ribbon cables and with the MDS-202 adapter you can also connect directly to the double density floppy interface card. You don't have to use 3.5" floppy drives there is an 8" connector at the bottom of the PCB
 

Attachments

DougM said:
Thanks for playing! You folks are exactly correct of course - it's an MDS-220.

I've never tried to fire it up but I might even have the boot disks for it - I have a rather large collection of 8" floppies, though I don't have the cables for the external floppy drives. It would be a good project for someone to pull all the bits off those floppies and get them up on the Internets somewhere - any volunteers?

View attachment 1255927

All of this stuff was destined for the Dumpster when I picked it up, but I never did anything with it aside from the paper tape punch.
Click to expand...

If any of the 8" Floppies have Intel Software on them I'd be interested in recovering the contents as it may be something Intel Dev-Sys doesn't currently have.

If you ever decide you need to create a boot floppy for your MDS check out my img2mds utility here:

Intro to img2mds

Using img2mds on an MDS II/III
 
Martynv said:
If any of the 8" Floppies have Intel Software on them I'd be interested in recovering the contents as it may be something Intel Dev-Sys doesn't currently have.

If you ever decide you need to create a boot floppy for your MDS check out my img2mds utility here:

Intro to img2mds

Using img2mds on an MDS II/III
Click to expand...
What would be the best way to go ahead with this project? Does anyone have an 8" floppy to USB interface they'd be willing to loan me? Or I could ship all the floppies to you and you could offload the data?

Thanks,
 
The easiset option would be a Greaseweazle and an Fdap assuming you have a working 8" Drive. We can the extract the files from the Flux image. Geaseweazle is incredibly useful in an case for archiving and creating floppy disks.

How many floppies are we talking about ?
 
Martynv said:
The easiset option would be a Greaseweazle and an Fdap assuming you have a working 8" Drive. We can the extract the files from the Flux image. Geaseweazle is incredibly useful in an case for archiving and creating floppy disks.

How many floppies are we talking about ?
Click to expand...
This many
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I have a lot of drives, one of which probably works but I don't have anything to interface it to. I can work up power.

Does anyone have an FDADAP and a GreaseWeasel they could loan me? Alternately if there's someone in the Seattle area setup to do this I could bring the disks over.
 
Doug reached out to me directly and I'll get with him to see what can be done. The drive I use is a Qumetrak 842, so assuming the disks aren't shedding media like a stressed cat, I should be able to get something off of them. :)

g.
 
Turns out @geneb and I are neighbors, relatively speaking, so I'm going to bring the disks down to him at some point in the not too distant future, probably late June.
 
Had a lab full of these in the mid-1980's. Ran the ISIS-II operating system and with 80188 and 80186 in-circuit emulators plugged into the Multibus slots.
 
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