16 Apr
2007
16 Apr
'07
1:03 p.m.
Subject: MFMulation? (Solid-state replacements for MFM drives)
From: Entity <entity at nenevr.demon.co.uk>
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 23:05:49 +0100 (BST)
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Hello, all.
Does anyone on the list know if anyone in our extended community has ever
come up with some sort of plug-compatible flash memory replacement for MFM
drives?
No. Flash has a write limit before failure. that makes it useless for
swap/page space. Also the number of CHS combinations of old disks were
numerous.
I've a vague idea that I've seen a commercial
offering at some point in
the past, but obviously that'd be a fairly expensive move to make.
(Fairly? Oh, OK. Very.)
I've got a Northstar Horizon that I mentioned on here many, many years
ago and I've just started looking at it again; once I've got it up and
running it'd be nice to add some sort of permanent storage, but without
jettisoning one of the floppy drives. The SuperIO board is one option,
but I'd like to keep it as stock-Northstar as I can.
CF to s100 takes maybe 10 peices of generic ttl, It would require a
new (or argumented) bios for CP/M and NSdos never supported a hard disk
(or similar) without a rewrite (except on the Advantage).
I've done both IDE and CF for 8085 and z80 systems as a way to get bulk
storage for them. It's easy to do in hardware and a software project
as there is no direct support off the shelf (one of hardware).
Allison