Introduction
Excerpt from the operating manual of 1978: "The BASF 6106 and the BASF 6108 mini disk storage are small, compact, reliable and reasonably priced floppy disk memories. The BASF 6108 is a dual-head memory, backwards compatible with the BASF 6106, but with twice the storage capacity. The recording method on both devices is either FM or MFM depending on the controller. The BASF 6106 and BASF 6108 mini-disk storage offers outstanding potential applications as peripheral data storage for small and desktop computers, point-of-sale terminals and word processing. These BASF mini-disk storages offer a powerful alternative to punched tape input and output devices, magnetic tape cassettes and magnetic card readers in many applications, more performance and higher reliability are achieved with the same or smaller size and comparable costs."
The newspaper advertisement of December 1983 can probably be deduced indirectly that the 6106 was an obsolete model in 1983. In comparison, TEAC's modern floppy disk drives were really expensive. The FD55F (DS/DD) costs almost 1,000 DM!
Technical specifications
The BASF 6106 is a wonderful old floppy drive with a real HEAD LOAD. When the read head accesses, there is a really loud crack when the head loading mechanism presses the floppy surface onto the head below.
| Formfactor | 5,25" |
| Capacity | 180 KByte / SSDD / (1 x 40 x 9 x 512 = 184.320 Byte) |
| Sides (Heads) | 1 |
| Tracks/Side | 40 |
| Sectors/Track | 9 |
| Byte/Sector | 512 |
| Height | 53,5 mm (The height of a standard 5.24" drive is 41.3 mm) |
LSI Version
Important: The BASF 6106 is available in two PCB versions. A former "normal" version and a later LARGE SCALE INTEGRATED CIRCUIT (LSI) version. All my drives are LSI version with a 40 PIN 81041-003 chip from ITT. Note: The LSI PCB version has a different jumper matrix!
Jumper Settings
The jumper settings are the nuts and bolts when connecting the 6106 to the PC. Wrong jumper settings and the 6106 behaves like a machine gun; Stepper and in particular the head loading magnet play crazy!
I use the 6106 as single drive, as drive A:. According to the settings, the 6106 has been jumpered as the second drive (DRIVE no. 2 or DS1). Why? The 6106 has the appearance of a normal floppy connection as everyone knows, but ...! The 6106 comes from pre-PC era and still uses the original Shugart interface (DS0-DS2). Here, however, the lines 10-12 are occupied differently.
However, this problem can be easily solved with a twist on lines 10-16. In other words, take the known floppy cable from the IBM PC era, this one has a twist on the lines 10 to 16 and connect the 6106 at the end, behind the twister! That's it. Don't forget the resistor (150 Ohm).
| Shugart (here 6106) | Signal | PC | Signal |
| 10 | DS0 | 16 | MOTOR ENABLE B |
| 12 | DS1 | 14 | DRIVE SELECT A |
| 14 | DS2 | 12 | DRIVE SELECT B |
| 16 | MOTOR ENABLE | 10 | MOTOR ENABLE A |
When the PC controller sends the MOTOR ENABLE A (10) signal, the 6106 will receive it at MOTOR ENABLE (16) correctly. Likewise DRIVE SELECT A (14) on DS1 (12).
LSI Version
These settings work fine with my CompatiCard IV (CC4: P4, straight, DS1, A2) and the BASF 6106 (LSI) as external drive at the connector P4 (DB37). Note: You have to switch OFF the power funktion on the CC4!
The BASF 6106 has another special feature besides pin/line 2 (HEAD LOAD). Pin/line 34 is also used here (DISK CHANGE or IN USE). Actually this signal is only used from the IBM AT (5170) era on (detecting the presence of a drive or differentiating a "360K" from a "1.2M"). I noticed this, because during booting the BASF 6106 is directly accessed.
Manuals
The most important copies are listed below. The last manual is with parts catalog and breakdown; very important! Only the first manual belongs to the LSI PCB version!
- Manual LSI (en) (5,1 MByte) / Jumper matrix at page 3-10
- Manual (de), 1981 (1,2 MByte)
- Maintenance (de) (300 KByte)
- Manual (en) (5 MByte)
- Manual (en) incl. parts catalog and breakdown (4.5 MByte)