Date : Wed, 23 Jul 2003 14:42:35 +0100
From : Jon Ripley <beeb@...>
Subject: Re: [Announce] BBC Hard Drives Package (for supporting emulators)
In message <20030722163818.3e82a301.charlesb@...>
you wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Jul 2003 14:23:16 +0100
> Jon Ripley <beeb@...> wrote:
>
> > I would like to announce the release of the BBC Hard Drives package.
> >
> > The BBCHDDs packace contains twenty-two preformatted ADFS hard drives
> > for use with emulators.
>
> <CUT>
>
> > One feature lacking from many BBC Microcomputer emulators is 1Mhz bus
> > support, this unfortunately means that while floppy disk images and
> > audio tape images are usually supported hard drives are not.
>
> do you hhave a list of working emu's that will be able to read them?
> will beebem read them? i'm a linux user, and beebem is really afaik the
> only emulator available.
I know of no emulators which include hard drive support, though this
does not mean that there aren't any. All (AFAIK) emulators which will
run the ADFS ROM will be able to mount the drives as ADFS floppy disks
but due to the way that ADFS is written only the first 640k will be
accessible.
If 1Mhz bus support and a virtual hard drive interface is added to
BeebEm or any other emulator then the drives will be fully accessible.
The way ADFS is written floppy access and HDD access are seperate and it
would not be a worthwhile task modifying the ADFS ROM to access very
large floppies.
I've been sitting on this package for a year and have released it in
hope that it will be useful and might encourage/assist development.
I have a BBC Master 128 and a 28Mb hard drive and I know how useful a
hard drive can be on a BBC. I hope to be able to use the same on an
emulated machine some day.
If there is anyone who knows of or who has written an Acorn 8-bit
emulator which includes hard drive support please get in touch.
If you are developing or maintaining an appropriate emulator please look
into adding support.
Jon R. - who has the real thing.
PS If you're throwing away a large (in Mb) MFM or RLL drive please get
in touch, I've been looking for almost a decade now and I have a very
good home for it.
--
http://www.stryker.freeserveco.uk/ Quality RISC OS Software
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