21 Nov
2005
21 Nov
'05
8:03 p.m.
The E20 hard
disk unit contains the standard Host Adapter card linked
to
a 20NByte SCSI hard disk. That was the normal
thing to link to the 34
pin
connector on the E01. It sohuld be relatively
easy to put one of
those
together... Is there any restriction on the hard
disk size? What
would
happen if I linked up a unit of several hundred
Mbyte capacity? Would
it
just not work, would it only see it as a 20Mhyte
unit, or would it
see
the whole thing?
There will be some limit, but I'm not sure what it is. More than 20MB,
for sure. Might be 500MB, maybe less. I know that stacking filestores
use the same code, and I know that although the largest ones sold and
supported by Acorn were 60MB, they had bigger in-house. Yes, two 3.5" floppies. And I just happen to
have a set :-) One is
for use with a Master 128 called "M128-FSUTILS" and the other is for
use with a Compact and labelled "COMPACT-FSUTILS".
What's the difference?
I don't have a Compact, so I probably don't need the second disk. Can I
assume these are the hard disk formatter, etc, programs and not the
diagnostic stuff?
They're 640K, like ADFS L format, but the actual disk directory etc is
somewhat different, and called "Filestore Format". So I can copy them
for you if you send me a couple of 3.5" DD floppies. I've never tried
Will do, but it won't be soon (I've got a lot to do before I need the
utility disk).
making a teledisk image; that *might* work.
They're double-density,
256 bytes/sector, 16 sectors/track.
Should be possible, but not a lot of use to me as I don;t haev Teledisk
(and don't intend to try to write soemthing to handle its images). I
might have a go at writing programs to handle Imagedisk stuff though.
Ditto! The test box pre-dates the Master series,
though. It was
around when Beebs were.
It's a pitty the software seems to be long-lost....
The chap who
sold this to me included a couple of such Sony
drives, alas missing the front panels and eject buttons. I now have
to
try to find those. The missing mounting hardware
is less of a
problem,
as are the missing cables.
Those probably came from a Master Compact or an Archimedes -- they used
the drives without the bezels.