23 Feb
2011
23 Feb
'11
11:05 a.m.
On 23 Feb 2011 at 10:09, Zane H. Healy wrote:
Is he working on one? Even as unhappy as I was with
the the Zorro
Catweasel I bought, I'd consider that.
Probably not. The state of the art has advanced to the point where a
universal floppy reader/writer is mostly a matter of software anyway,
judging from the number of Chinese-origin floppy emulators based on
ARM designs. Just a matter of some interface circuitry and a bit of
RAM mostly.
I also need to determine if my Zorro Catweasel
includes the IDE
interface. The following product he has now looks most interesting.
http://www.jschoenfeld.com/products/trueide_e.htm
I don't exactly appreciate the idea behind this. I use CF-to-PATA
adapers on several machines (my mail server uses a Microdrive in one)
and have no problems booting or anything else--but they're running
Linux or DOS.
I assume that what Jens' little gadget does is to intercept the
result from the IDENTIFY command and clears the "removable media" bit
in the return packet (Word 0, bit 7). It might matter to Windoze
systems and perhaps to a few picky BIOSes.
But PATA's a dead duck. I'd like to see an SDHC-to-SATA adapter.
--Chuck