Date   : Tue, 07 Apr 1998 19:09:02 +0100
From   : Stuart William McConnachie <stuart@...>
Subject: Re: BBC Hard Disks

In message <3.0.3.32.19980407122423.006a5230@...>,
Crispin Boylan <viewtronix@...> writes
>As it so hard to find a hard drive and interface which would work with the
>BBC, I was wondering - why not use a PC hard disk instead?  If you had a pc
>as well, you could serial link the two together, and use some of the PC's
>hard drive space as a BBC partition?  I know it would mean partitioning the
>hard disk in a certain way - but could it be done?
Why bother partitioning the PC hard drive?  Just create a big file in
one of the PCs standard partitions (either DOS, W95 or NT) which
represents the whole of the BBC hard drive then use standard calls to
read the file and transfer to the Beeb (much safer too :-)).  Serial
port is a bit slow for this kind of thing, but easy to connect.  Bi-
directional parallel to BBC user port would be faster, but may require
external hardware.

>I'm not really too sure, as PC's are usually IDE, I suppose it would need
>modifications to the filing system on the BBC, and possibly some kind of
>program on the PC??
However you did it you'd need to write a custom file system on the Beeb
and a driver/support program on the PC.

>It's probably a wacky idea, I'm just wondering if it could work.
I know of someone who has already done this, but to a RISC PC.  They
didn't bother with the virtual disk on the RISC PC just stored
everything as individual files (which is probably an even better idea).

Regards,
-- 
Stuart McConnachie (stuart@...              )
43 The Hollows, Long Eaton, Nottingham, NG10 2ES, UK
Mobile: 0966 224307