Date   : Wed, 15 Oct 2008 21:54:52 +1000
From   : msmcdoug@... (Mark McDougall)
Subject: WD179x in an FPGA

Hi Guys,

Thought this may interest some...

I've just gotten writes working on my FPGA implementation of the TRS-80 and 
WD179x. Atm I can read disk images from flash/sram and format/write to sram.

If I recall correctly, the Beeb has a WD17xx-family controller in it. At 
some stage in the not too distant future I'll have a go at hooking up the 
WD179x to my Beeb implementation. Looking forward to trying out a few Beeb 
games on it. ;)

BTW the implementation requires "raw" disk images, or raw track data. For 
the TRS-80 there is an emulated disk format known as ".DMK" which contains a 
small header, a header on each track, and raw track data. Atm I'm extracting 
the raw track data and using that. The reason I need raw data BTW is that 
the implementation supports all controller commands, including track 
read/write commands.

I haven't even looked into the BBC emulated disk formats, but I'm assuming 
either that there's a similar format specified, or another format which 
contains only sector data. Anyway I'll check it out sometime soon...

Regards,

-- 
|              Mark McDougall                | "Electrical Engineers do it
|  <http://members.iinet.net.au/~msmcdoug>   |   with less resistance!"