Date   : Sat, 10 Jan 2004 15:12:22 +0000 (GMT)
From   : Andrew Benham <adsb@...>
Subject: Re: IDE Interface for BBC

On Sat, 10 Jan 2004, Mike Tomlinson wrote:

> Hard disks for the BBC B used a SASI interface attached to the 1MHz
> bus, and an Adaptec SASI-to-MFM converter board to which an MFM hard
> drive is connected.

Again for completeness and the archive, the Adaptec SASI-to-MFM
board was an Adaptec ACB4000.
There are other contemporary SASI-to-MFM boards available (I used
a Xebec one for a while until I found some ACB4000 boards), but
the SASI command sets weren't that well standardised. As a result
Acorn's SuperForm program is specific to the Adaptec board (as I
recall), and I believe the same applies to the '*VERIFY' built
in to the ADFS ROM.

> The Adaptec converter board was about 4" x
> 6", was packed with chips, and had, if I remember right, an 8086 CPU
> and
> its own firmware in ROM which in theory made it more powerful than the
> machine it connected to.

Actually it has an 8085 CPU, but your comment is still correct.

-- 
Andrew Benham     adsb@...       
Southgate, London N14, United Kingdom

The gates in my computer are AND OR and NOT, not "Bill".