Date   : Fri, 02 Jul 2004 14:03:18 +0100
From   : Richard Gellman <splodge@...>
Subject: Re: Acorn Winchester unit

Jules Richardson wrote:

>I found an Acorn Winchester unit yesterday. Still has the Acorn
>Winchester board lurking below the Adaptec ST506-SCSI bridge board, and
>a Rodime drive present. However, there's no case lid! If anyone ever
>finds a shell of one of these in a skip, let me know :)
>
>I almost missed picking it up (I was sifting through a lot of junk at
>the time) as I could see the Adaptec bridge board and figured I didn't
>need another one of those - I have a few already. Without the case lid I
>couldn't tell it was an Acorn unit, but luckily someone else pulled it
>off the shelf and I saw Acorn written on the back...
>
>Q: what ROM(s) do I need present in the host system to drive this? Does
>ADFS already contain code to talk to the Winchester board if present on
>the 1MHZ bus, or do I need ADFS + some software, or is there a different
>ROM altogether that I need?
>
>ta
>
>Jules
>  
>
Yes, the ADFS ROM contains the code to access the drive over the 1Mhz 
Bus. I'm led to believe there are some bizarre DFSes out there that can 
handle hard drives too, but I wouldn't know which. ADFS works better 
anyways.

Note that you can't just nick the ADFS ROM code from a Master 128 if you 
intend to use a BBC B. Firstly the ADFS ROM in the M128 uses 
65C12-specific opcodes, and the B's 6502 will just vomit at those, 
secondly, if you try to use the ADFS with floppy disks it will b0rk, 
even if you have a 177x controller fitted, as the B puts the FDC at a 
different location to the Master.

By the way, if anyone has an Acorn Winchester Host Adapter board (1Mhz 
Bus -> SCSI board) they'd like to flog me, let me know. I'd like to play 
with getting my 500Mb SCSI drive hooked up.

-- Richard