Date   : Tue, 07 Apr 1998 22:35:13 +0100
From   : Mike Tomlinson <jasper@...>
Subject: Re: BBC Hard Disks

In article <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?

You wouldn't even need to partition the PC disk - just run some software
on the PC which stored files saved from the BBC in a subdirectory, and
dish 'em up as required.

When (many moons ago, oo-aar) I were a student at Lancashire
Polytechnic, the computer lab used Beebs with a custom-written ROM which
implemented a pseudo-filing system over serial lines to the poly's Prime
mainframe for file storage.  I forget what it was called, but it
supported standard file load/save, *load, *save, etc. commands.  Being
serial, it was a bit slow but worked well for loading games during
lunchtimes.  The software also beeped quietly every time so much data
was transferred so you knew it was working. The Prime had a huge library
of BBC games in the directory bbclib>games.

The same ROM also implemented a standard VTnn and Tektronix emulation so
the Beebs could be used as standard Unix terminals to the mainframe.  

Again, years ago (god, it's my birthday today too and I'm turning into
an old fart) when I had a Spectrum and Interface I with microdrive, I
wrote code for the BBC which allowed the Spectrum, using the Load *"b"
and Save *"b" commands to save and load files from the Beeb's
floppy/hard drives over the serial port.  That too worked very well.

Instead of trying to figure out how to attach an IDE drive to a Beeb or
farting about with slow serial links, a simpler approach might be to
write a pseudo-filing system to transfer data over the Beeb's user port
connected to the PC's printer port.  Data transfer would be parallel,
thus much faster.  The software at both ends shouldn't be too difficult
to write (said he, ducking and running before anyone suggests he write
it.)

-- 
Mike Tomlinson
"Watch me not care."  - Dogbert