DESCRIPTION
The Adaptec AIC-010 Programmable Mass Storage Controller is a LSI component that provides the major portion of hardware necessary to build a Winchester disk controller. The chip is capable of supporting most drive interfaces including, but not limited to, ST506/412, ESDI, ST412-HP, SAIOOO, and SMD. In addition, the chip can also be setup to control QIC-36 interface tape drives, and other such peripherals. The Adaptec In addition, this allows the user to define specialized track formats. The AIC-010 forms the nucleus of a three chip set comprised of the AIC-010, AIC-250 (or AIC-2.70) and the AIC-300. These chips along with a data seperator, driver/receivers, and a microprocessor chip provide all that is required to implement a full-featured, high performance disk controller. Typically, most implementations are able to read or write a full track in one revolution, run commonly available drives at their performance limits and, in fact, tend to put the performance bottleneck within the limitations of the system, as opposed to those of the controller.
