Date   : Sun, 20 Feb 2000 17:04:09 -0000
From   : "Fraser, Colin J" <Colin.Fraser@...>
Subject: Re: BBC Winchesters

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andrew Benham [mailto:adsb@...]
> Sent: Sunday, February 20, 2000 4:32 PM
> To: bbc-micro@...
> Subject: [BBC-Micro] BBC Winchesters
> 
> The 'traditional' approach to putting a Winchester disk 
> onto a BBC Micro has been to use a host adaptor on the
> 1MHz bus, together with a SCSI -> ST506 controller (e.g.
> Adaptec ACB4000) and an MFM drive.
> 
> I believe several people have tried putting a SCSI disk
> straight onto the host adaptor: after all, the ACB4000
> is a SCSI card, so the host adaptor must talk SCSI ??
> Or is it all down to SASI/SCSI differences ?
> 
> Since it is now easier to find second-hand SCSI drives
> than MFM drives (in my experience), I'm about to have
> a go at retiring my ACB4000 and using a SCSI disk
> direct.
> Is there anyone who wants to share ideas on this ?

I looked at using a microcontroller to provide an IDE interface that would
be compatible with ADFS, and hang off the 1MHz bus.
I started some work toward this, but don;t really have time to progress it
at the moment.
I've also considered building an interface to hook to 1MHz bus up to a PC
parallel port and write some 'virtual BBC hard drive' software for the PC.
One of these days I may get round to either one...

Colin f