Date : Wed, 10 Jan 2007 18:36:31 -0000
From : BBCMailingList@... (Ian Wolstenholme)
Subject: Domesday players and modern hardware
Not me, I've only ever connected up my VP-415 player to similarly
ancient hardware!
Just before I decommissioned my Domesday Machine before Christmas
I tried connecting the laserdisc player to a Beeb via the 1MHz bus
with an Acorn host adapter but I didn't have any luck. Although ADFS
apparently mounted the disc, any attempt to catalogue or read the
disc just gave Bad FS Map and similar errors. This would suggest that
the free space map/directory structure under VFS may be slightly
different than ADFS, or maybe sector 0 isn't in quite the location that
ADFS expects due to the other information on the disc.
I must admit I didn't try any sector reading/writing whilst this was
connected up, that might be something for me to try in the future.
I'm pretty sure I've also had the VP-415 connected up to an
Archimedes with SCSI podule in the past. I can't remember exactly
what happened but it would have been nothing to write home
about otherwise I would have... written home about it!
It's definitely been done with modern hardware though, either
for the first "rescue" attempt (the "Loyd Grossman" one) or the
more recent work which led to the web version.
As for the other discs you mention (Ecodisc, Volcanoes, Countryside)
there will be data which could be archived. They are all LV-ROM
discs with a mixture of VFS data and video frames.
I took a copy of the Volcanoes disc data onto my MDFS when I
had access to a disc briefly back in September. I've never tried
running the Ecodisc (except to play side 2 which is a TV programme),
I'm saving it for a rainy day!
Best wishes,
Ian
----- Original Message -----
From: Jules Richardson [mailto:julesrichardsonuk@...]
To: bbc-micro@...
Sent: Wed, 10 Jan 2007 11:15:07 -0600
Subject: [BBC-Micro] Domesday players and modern hardware
Someone on here a while back had a Domesday VP-415 player hooked up to (I
assume) a more modern machine - afraid I can't remember who it was now (either
Darren or Ian I think!).
I've just been taking masses of Domesday-related photos, and as the player was
near to a PC with a SCSI card in it, I thought I'd hook it up and see what the
system made of it.
The short answer is, not a lot. Or at least, both Adaptec's BIOS and Linux
barf rather nicely, apparently because the player's one of those lovely
devices claiming SCSI compatibility which doesn't support the Inquiry command.
Adaptec's BIOS gets confused and thinks it's a fixed disk for some reason
(yes, "support removeable drives as fixed disks" is disabled :-) - reporting
the unit as being drive C: with no device name available. Linux just chokes
and refuses to recognise the unit as it won't respond to Inquiry (I'll post to
one of the Linux groups about that in case there's a workaround).
So, to whoever managed to get this working, what setup did you use? Or did you
just happen to have a player with later firmware? I've done all the obvious
stuff (parity disabled, forcing the data rate to something obscenely low
etc.), so it looks like I'm just hitting a brick wall because the player isn't
"properly" SCSI compliant. I'm not *that* bothered, I was just curious as to
whether there was anything "archiveable" on the Eco / Countryside / Volcanoes
discs as there is for Domesday.
cheers
Jules
--
there's a carp in the tub
there's a carp in the tub
so nobody's taken a bath
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