Rebel Hard Disk

Rebel RB1000

A Winchester hard disk controller for the QL, from Rebel Electronics Ltd of Leeds, England, produced in 1989.

The RB1000 interface used a Western Digital chipset. It was a standard ST506/ST412 drive interface. It had an 32K sector buffer. It could control up to 2 hard disk drives and plugged into the QL expansion port or backplane such as the Rebel backplane.

The hard disk interface cost £195 while a complete system (the RB2000) comprising the controller interface, 20MB drive and power supply cost £399, with a 30MB and 40MB hard disk available as an option.

The first versions of this harddisk uses software, which uses some kind of commands known by DOS users: "MD" for Make Directory, "CD" for Change Directory. We still have to examine the software (Missing In Action).