🚀 go-pugleaf

In my engineering tunure, I've discovered disk drive interfaces are
nearly as frustrating as RS-232 (and other) serial ports :-).  A
wihile back I was trying to tame a cantankerous Teac 55-B drive in
an AT&T 6300.  I called Teac to get the low-down on the drive.
When I got through to their engineer he asked "What have you got",
to which I said "55-B".  He said, "like I said, what have you got".
It turns out that there were something like 95 OEM versions of the
55-B.  Their engineer further expalained that on average, the
layout of the PCB for the "generic" models of the 55-B changes
about every two weeks (!).

The upshot of this is that drives you get on the surplus market can
be almost anything at all.  In the case of Teac, they disavow all
knowledge of any of the OEM versions.  Thus, buyer beware when
adding surplus drives to your system.  Pins 1, 2, and 34 as Bryce
noted can be almost anything.  At least defacto standardization has
taken over for most of the rest of the interface.

For the moment, I'll stick with my engineering solution of leaving
something in the drive.

Bill
wtm@neoucom.UUCP

<<disclaim this article at your own risk>>