INTEL iSBC-221
PERIPHERAL CONTROLLER

General Description
Documents
Diagrams
Summary

General description

The iSBC® 221 is a multifunction peripheral controller that provides access to high-performance, high-capacity disk drives (hard, flexible, and streaming tape). I/O bound applications and/or those requiring high disk capacity will especially benefit from this fast, reliable controller.

 

The iSBC-221 can replace the Intel iSBC-214 without changing the
operating system device driver or the disk drives.

FEATURES:

  • Support for ESDI and ST506/412 hard disk drives, SA 45X/46X/475 flexible disk drives, and QIC-02 streaming tape drives
  • Multiple track caching via 128K on-board data buffer
  • Dual bus structure
  • 10 MHz 80186 Microprocessor
  • Mirror backup/restore between tape and hard drive
  • On-board self-test diagnostics
  • Error-checking and correcting code logic
  • Support for 4,096 cylinders and 16 heads

 

Diagrams

INTERFACING TO ST506/412 DISK

The iSBC-221 controller can interface to one or two ST506/412 Winchester 5.25-inch disk drives. The Winchester physical interface consists of one 34-pin, right angle connector which handles a single control cable and two 20-pin, right angle connectors that mate with the Winchester data cables (one for each drive). The single control cable is connected in daisy chain manner to both drives.

 

SA45X/46X/475 5.25-INCH FLEXIBLE DISK INTERFACE

The iSBC-221 controller can interface a maximum of four 5.25-inch flexible disk drives. To select 5.25-inch flexible disk drives, the user may jumper certain stake pins on the board. The flexible disk physical interface consists of a single 34-pin right-angle connector which mates to the drive’s data/control cable. Note that flexible diskettes formatted using an iSBC-215G controller with an iSBX-218A MULTIMODULE are compatible with the iSBC-221 controller as long as the data encoding technique is the same (FM or MFM).

 

QIC-2 TAPE DRIVE INTERFACE

The iSBC-221 board can interface up to four QIC-2 standard streaming tape drives. All standard commands in the QIC-2 interface are supported by the iSBC-214 board. The QIC-2 physical interface on the board consists of a single 50-pin rightangle connector. The QIC-2 control signal cable mates with this header; additional drives are daisy-chained off the control cable.