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Morley ST506 Controller card (top)
Morley ST506 Controller Card (back)
Morley ST506 Controller Card (bottom)
When the Archimedes A300 range was launched there were two types of disc interface available; ST506 (or MFM) which was expensive but slow and SCSI which was very expensive but fast. Typically ST506 drives were 10 or 20 MB, and I think the largest commonly used were about 90MB. So Acorn left the hard disc interface off the A300 motherboard although they included an ST506 interface on the A410/1. Naturally other companies stepped in to fill the gap, and one of these was Morley Electronics with an ST506 podule which connected to an ST506 drive mounted in the left hand drive position at the front of the A300. the cables connected to the 2 sockets on the right hand side of the top picture, just behind the back plate. One cable was for commands and the second for data. The podule uses a Hitachi HD63463P disc controller.