Date   : Thu, 10 Jun 2004 15:23:19 +0200
From   : John Kortink <kortink@...>
Subject: Solid state storage for the beeb

Y'all,

I want to gauge interest in a project of mine that
is nearing completion. Given enough interest I may
take it into production.

GoMMC, as I've nicknamed the project, provides for
'floppies on a flash ROM card'. Currently, a patched
DNFS 1.20 ROM provides, via a 8271 emulation layer,
100% DFS-compatible access to 400K 'floppies' (about
600 of them !) stored on a 256 MB Multimedia Card
(one of those tiny cards you usually put in a digital
camera, the 256MB ones are about 60 Euro/40 UKP ATM).

A *VOLUME command selects your 'floppy' out of the
600 available. And away you go. Solid state storage.
In principle all this will be inside your BBC or
Master (the interface is small enough to do that).
No more floppy drive, hard disc, or even 65Link to
attach. And you can take your software with you, to
your friends ;-).

Current read/write speed is around 8KB/sec, but this
will go up by a factor of around 8 (64KB/sec) once
I've optimized the interface.

If you've got any interest in having one of these,
email me. I estimate the price of an interface (sans
MMC card, which you'll be able to buy and plug in
yourself) will probably be around the 50 to 70 Euro
mark (35 to 50 UKP).


John Kortink