Date   : Wed, 08 Mar 2006 17:45:50 +0000
From   : Fragula <fragula@...>
Subject: 1MHZ SCSI/ATA board.

Mark Usher wrote:

> Nope, it doesn't support parity, or unit ATN I think it was. A major
> stumbling block when trying to get modern drives to work on the beeb.

Hang on, we are not trying to get a modern drive to work with the
ACB-4000. Sure I follow your drift though.

Its a minor set back. So we need something, either software (undesirable
IMO), or a something on the 1MHz<>SCSI adaptor. Err.. A Micro.

But then we are half way to sticking commoditty ATAPI drives in place.

Be it Atapi or SCSI, if we had a micro to do command filtering
(including "fleshing out" where appropriate) the we might as well have a
micro and a little tiny bit of SRAM, as it would be nice to [sector
number translate/read sector/edit appropriate halfsector/rewrite
sector] to fully utilize the drive, remainder can be used for scratch
and a disk cache! Voila, 100% density utilisation.

Now what about ADFS and partitions? filesystem limits? Any ideas for
cheats that could be implemented on the adaptor so that more space could
be used?

How about a hardware partitioning? an extra register on the 1MHz bus
that (if possible using any SCSI device no./LUN info ADFS may offer)
adds an offset of so many "max-adfs-filesystem-sizes"(+a searchable for
marker block perhaps) to the blocknumbers going through. it could be a
bit of software (would have to be on each partition if you wanted to
switch back!) or better still.

(OMG- yet another sub-sub-topic)

added to the mailing list's: <roll of drums> ***Essential Utils ROM.***

The ROM where all the little do-dahas that do not deserve a whole ROM,
yet are inconvenient on disk for whatever reason.

Do we have one of those?

If not, I'd better get cracking. I have a "framework" in place for a (by
intention) modular utils ROM, with a bunch of little progs (currently a
CLI, and a bunch of stuff that are really just for my own taste (MODE 3
in Green for startup) and peculiar(Integra-b/DFDC/Extra static RAM on
mobo) machine. Will be releasing under GPL as soon as I've cleaned the
source, and converted it from my (also peculiar, but then is using a
beeb /normal/ in 2006?) dev methods (View as editor, homemade v2a
convertor, and Gremlin (err.. actually might be a messed-with version
that writes direct to sideways RAM on the Integra and does an image
save.) used as a disk->memory assembler. I'm guessing that most folk
would like to have it as a BBC BASIC w. inline assembler listing??? Oh..
That might be impractical. Certainly way to big for memory on a model B.

Suggestions please.

Once the framework is out, it might be nice to have contributions,
votes, and yearly releases of "top ten" favorites.

So. Any interest? Suggestions for the source file format?

Cheers!

M.