Date   : Fri, 16 Jan 2004 09:12:17 GMT
From   : Pete Turnbull <pete@...>
Subject: Re: Host adapter Issue D

On Jan 15, 17:29, Jules Richardson wrote:
> Other than Acorn and Torch, who else made hard disk interface boards
for
> the BBC?

Amcom comes to mind.

> Oh, the board set from another Torch Hard Disk machine landed on the
> doorstep yesterday, and it got me curious as it's the first time I've
> seen the use of an Adaptec ACB4000 board; normally Torch favoured
Xebec
> controllers on their BBC-based machines and Omti boards on some of
the
> higher-spec systems.
>
> That does kind-of imply that enough of the command set is the same
> between the Xebec and Adaptec boards that they are interchangeable as
> far as driving them from software is concerned.

I could have told you that, in fact I think I did.  Providing you can
format the disk (that part's slightly different), and can initialise
the Xebec controller with the drive parameters each time you start the
machine, the rest works as you'd exect.  The Adaptec ACB4000 series
store drive geometry on the drive, and read it back as part of their
initialisation process; the Xebec S1410 has to be given the parameters
by the host.  When I built my S1410 system for the Beeb, I wrote my own
formatter, which stored the disk info in a short file on track 0, and I
wrote a little boot program which extracted that and set up the S1410
properly.

-- 
Pete                                           Peter Turnbull
                                               Network Manager
                                               University of York