Xebec SASI controller utilities disk image for Apple II needed

5 posts / 0 new
Last post
Offline
Last seen: 1 year 8 months ago
Joined: Jan 10 2023 - 08:22
Posts: 5
Xebec SASI controller utilities disk image for Apple II needed

Hi,
I'm a vintage computer collector from Germany and new to this forum. Recently, I acquired some Apple II+/IIes and with them came a Xebec SASI host adapter and a huge hard disk. From browsing the web, I found that apparently Xebec sold kits consisting of the host adapter for an Apple II/II+/IIe plus an external controller PCB to turn a dumb MFM hard disk drive into a SASI HDD – at least I found a Xebec manual describing such a kit. Some German company probably called Rothahn seems to have used those kits together with a compartment and a huge full-height BASF 5 ¼” hard disk with whopping 21 MB to sell them as complete HDD stations for the Apple II – I even got a German manual for it.
Unfortunately, booting from this BASF HDD didn’t work out of the box so I have to assume that at least the data one that HDD might get corrupted over the last 40 year - or the drive is gone, although it still spins up. I’d like to try to revive the station by giving the BASF drive a low-level format or by replacing it with another working MFM drive (which I have) but I couldn’t find an image of the necessary Xebec utilities disk anywhere on the usual websites. According to the two manuals I have a disk version named “XEBEC Apple Pascal 1.1” for the Pascal OS as well as an equivalent utility disk version for DOS 3.3 and for CP/M 2.20B must have existed. If anyone out there would be able to provide images for one (or all at best) of those utility disks, I would be very happy indeed…

Offline
Last seen: 5 months 1 week ago
Joined: Jul 5 2018 - 09:44
Posts: 2587
Those drives were sold in the

Those drives were sold in the US under the brand name "Sider".

 

The disk images for the Sider utilities are on Asimov.

 

I happen to have one of the 20MB Sider hard drives in working condition.  I was trying to sell it but nobody wants to pay anything for one.

 

Boletus's picture
Offline
Last seen: 4 months 1 week ago
Joined: Jan 25 2016 - 13:51
Posts: 82
xebec

Hi,

can you please post pictures of your controller and hdd? I wish that you please can check my preceding post and tell me if you recognize my xebec controllers..

 

https://www.applefritter.com/content/xebec-apple-23-board

 

thank you

Luca

 

 

 

Offline
Last seen: 1 year 8 months ago
Joined: Jan 10 2023 - 08:22
Posts: 5
I knew that those Xebec host

I knew that those Xebec host adapters were also used by the Sider HDDs - but from want I found out, they were apparently using a different ROM on the host adapter for each hard disk type the system was shipped with the drive geometry in that ROM. I found the Sider manuals on the web and from what I saw there, the Sider tools read out that information from the ROM and it isn't possible to use those tools to format and partition a drive with a different geometry, while the original Xebec tools (that I'm searching for) allowed to enter an arbitrary drive geometry with cylinders and heads according to the manuals I have (a bit like in old PCs were IBM initially only supported a fixed number of geometries until later BIOS versions allowed to enter arbitrary HDD geometries). Actually my plan B is to convert my system into a Sider from a software perspective by exchanging the ROM on my host adapter with an EPROM burned with a Sider ROM image (that I also have to find first) for a drive with equal or smaller geometry values than the BASF drive that I have here and to use the Sider tools to format it afterwards...

Offline
Last seen: 1 year 8 months ago
Joined: Jan 10 2023 - 08:22
Posts: 5
Sorry, I still have to find

Sorry, I still have to find out how to embed some images into my posts here - I've uploaded a photo of my host adapter to the files section and it looks different from yours. Mine is an Assy No. 103916 Rev. C...

Log in or register to post comments