21 Nov
2005
21 Nov
'05
10:13 p.m.
On Nov 20 2005, 18:29, Tony Duell wrote:
> I forget whether it's the mark that's
longer than the space, or the
> other way round, but in essence the longer interval gives the
hardware
Ah, does the TX output change on one edge of the clock and the Rx
input
sample on the opposite edge, or something?
Something like that. I forget the details.
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.
Accordign to the manual, there is a utility disk for
this unit, and
maybe
a service disk too (it's not clear whether this is
one disk or two).
The
former contained the program to format the winchester,
and is
therefore
somewhat importent.
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".
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
making a teledisk image; that *might* work. They're double-density,
256 bytes/sector, 16 sectors/track.
Once upon a time I made a couple of normal ADFS copies, so I can see
that the content seems to be most (all?) of the Master Series Welcome
disk, plus the normal Econet library programs, the utilities that come
with Level 3 for copying between filing systems and cataloging multiple
directories, Level 3 library programs like the formatter,
backup/restore, netmonitor, etc, some updated 1770 DFS ROM images,
printer drivers, etc.
The latter ran on a BBC Master and contained various
test programs. There was a special test box for Econet testing that
plugged into the econet ports on the Master and on the
unit-under-test
(here, the Filestore), and could source a clock and
simulate a
poor-quality line, both contrlled by lines on the user port.
Amazingly I
have this test box, I don't have the software.
Ditto! The test box pre-dates the Master series, though. It was
around when Beebs were.
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.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
21 Nov
21 Nov
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. 
22 Nov
22 Nov
12:33 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
Julese Richardson seems to think there'll be a problem with the fact that
the Filestore will want a deive that suports 256 byte sectors.
Of course with ST506/412 you're probably OK - the Adaptec board probably
supports various sector sizes (and of course the drive is non-intelligent and
won't care). The only manual I have to hand is for the OMTI board, but that
certainly supports 128/256/512/1024 bytes/sector.
But with SCSI straight to the host adapter it'll be somewhat different and the
drive needs to support whatever the initiator requests, which I expect is 256
bytes/sector. Acorn *might* have moved things along by then and be doing 512
bytes/sector - although in all fairness 256 is likely more suitable for the
nature of the data stored on a typical fileserver.
Pete, were there two releases of the format utility - one for ST-type disks
and one for SCSI? Strictly speaking in SCSI-world there's no need to define
drive geometry as it can be queried from the target drive itself, but this
would be a necessary step when using an ST-type drive. (of course ST-type
drives also need geometry subsequently stored - presumably in block 0 - which
isn't necessary for SCSI)
Certainly prior to formatting an ST-type disk with the OMTI board you need to
issue an 0xC2 "assign disk parameters" command to tell the board what it's
connected to; I can't imagine this is different with the Adaptec (unless it
does it via a vendor unique extension instead). I *think* this would all be
unnecessary for SCSI, although I suppose it might be possible to assign
different geometry to the SCSI drive that its physical geometry (providing you
don't exceed total space available) and the drive would translate accordingly.
Following that it's just a case of issuing a 'format unit' command (and
subsequent verification) to either the Adaptec board or in the case of SCSI
direct to the drive.
So there are a lot of similarities in the process, but there's an extra step
for ST-type drives that isn't (strictly?) necessary for SCSI.
True, Imagedisk is probably a more viable format these days (hat off to Dave
D). I've just gained another PC, so time to see if that one supports FM
recording on the disk interface (if not it goes in the bin - I don't need more
hardware around here :)
I'm sure It'll turn up sometime. I don't know what it is about Acorn, but
their stuff seems to vanish for years and then suddenly appear again. I bet
it's lurking in someone's garage somewhere...
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. 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'm sure I can rustle up a pair of suitable drives through the museum if you
have no luck (I've been deliberately rescuing 5.25" drives from landfill, but
it's probably time to start doing the same with 3.5"...)
cheers
Jules
8:47 p.m.
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.
Julese Richardson seems to think there'll be a problem with the fact that
the Filestore will want a deive that suports 256 byte sectors. >> The
chap who sold this to me included a couple of such Sony
>> drives, alas missing the front panels and eject buttons.
I'm sure I can rustle up a pair of suitable drives through the museum if you
21 Nov
21 Nov
10:51 p.m.
Pete Turnbull wrote:
Hmm, if you can ever do a raw image dump of that, shout! :-)
I've got a level-3 server hard disk which I can't get in to as I don't know
any passwords; I think I can get around this with the utils disk, except that
it isn't online anywhere...
The drive in question is another one used internally by Acorn, so it's
possible that it has some interesting stuff on it. I can boot it via a Master
Turbo and Winchester unit hooked up to a simple Econet, I just then can't do a
lot apart from shut it down again (because as you say the filesystem is
something other than ADFS). It may have been emptied of user data for all I
know, but I'd like to check *before* the disk keels over :-)
[Econet test box]
Is that this critter? :
http://www.beebmaster.co.uk/ETB.html
cheers
Jules
On Nov 20 2005, 18:29, Tony Duell wrote:
They didn't just stack them (as was intended by design)? Not practical for the
ST506 units I suppose is it'd only support two drives, but the SCSI ones I
think could be piled up to the limit of the SCSI bus - ie. 6 devices. 360MB
would not be at all bad for the time, considering the nature of the data which
tended to be stored on them.
Is there any restriction on the hard disk size?
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. Accordign to
the manual, there is a utility disk for this unit, and
maybe
a service disk too (it's not clear whether
this is one disk or two).
The
former contained the program to format the
winchester, and is
therefore
somewhat importent.
Yes, two 3.5" floppies. And I just happen to have a set :-) One is
for use with a Master 128 called "M128-FSUTILS" Amazingly I
have this test box, I don't have the software.
Ditto! The test box pre-dates the Master series, though. It was
around when Beebs were.
8:09 p.m.
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.
They didn't just stack them (as was intended by design)? Not practical for the
ST506 units I suppose is it'd only support two drives, but the SCSI ones I
think could be piled up to the limit of the SCSI bus - ie. 6 devices. 360MB
would not be at all bad for the time, considering the nature of the data which
tended to be stored on them.
22 Nov
22 Nov
12:03 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
The E01 (seperate host adapter) officially supported
only 1 E20 add-on
(contrary to what some web pages state). It's clear you can't connect
more than one E20, all the host adapters would respond to the same
address on the '2MHz bus' But ti's not clear to me if you could hack an
E20 to have more than one SCSI drive on the other side of the host adapter.
I'd forgotten about that; in ADFS-land, ADFS knew nothing about device IDs -
everything was ID 0 and so the host adapter could still only have one device
connected up to it. Maybe that was fixed for the Filestore's firmware though,
as it always seemed like a silly omission.
cheers
J.
8:41 p.m.
I'd forgotten about that; in ADFS-land, ADFS knew
nothing about device IDs -
everything was ID 0 and so the host adapter could still only have one device
How stupid! I wonder why they did that (after all, they allowed for
multiple floppy drives on the same controller). It's almsot as stupid as
POS haeving 2 storage devices (one floppy, one winchester) hard-coded
into the OS.
connected up to it. Maybe that was fixed for the
Filestore's firmware though,
as it always seemed like a silly omission.
According to the docs, the E01S (with the host adapter on the mainboard)
supported up to 4 SCSI drives. Now, the ROM is different between the E01
and E01S (if only because the former has a pair of 27256s, the latter a
single 27512), but I am not sure what, if any, changes were made to the
filesystem code. Certainly the host adapter _hardware_ could support
multiple devices (even on the E01 with the external host adapter). May be
worth investigating.
-tony
10:16 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
Isn't SASI just single target though? (I'd forgotten this, I was thinking that
it was multiple target like SCSI just without all the device reservation like
SCSI)
So if the board (despite Acorn calling it SCSI) is really just SASI (or maybe
if it started life as a SASI project) then it could explain why the software
never addressed more than one target device.
Either that or Acorn were rather short-sighted in their software, but they
weren't normally known for this (typically, if the hardware would do it they
seemed to think that someone would actually want to do it).
Maybe it comes down to code size and there just wasn't the room in the ADFS
ROM for the device selection code (assuming that Acorn's board contains the
necessary SCSI features anyway - I think you likely need /ATN to do device
selection?)
You made me realise that I need to archive the ROMs from the E01 I have in the
cupboard - I've only got E01S ROM dumps on this 'ere PC (at least they're
512Kbit). I've never had an E01S, but I do get stray ROMs amongst Acorn finds
occasionally, which is where these will have come from. Incidentally I have a
"Version A" ROM and a "Version 1" ROM; why Acorn named one with a
letter and
one with a number I don't know (they are different in content)
cheers
Jules
I'd
forgotten about that; in ADFS-land, ADFS knew nothing about device IDs -
everything was ID 0 and so the host adapter could still only have one device
How stupid! I wonder why they did that (after all, they allowed for
multiple floppy drives on the same controller). It's almsot as stupid as
POS haeving 2 storage devices (one floppy, one winchester) hard-coded
into the OS. connected up
to it. Maybe that was fixed for the Filestore's firmware though,
as it always seemed like a silly omission.
According to the docs, the E01S (with the host adapter on the mainboard)
supported up to 4 SCSI drives. Now, the ROM is different between the E01
and E01S (if only because the former has a pair of 27256s, the latter a
single 27512)
10:52 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
Isn't SASI just single target though? (I'd forgotten this, I was thinking that
I thought SASI supported a total of 8 devices on the bus, like 8-bit SCSI.
I'd
forgotten about that; in ADFS-land, ADFS knew nothing about device IDs -
everything was ID 0 and so the host adapter could still only have one device
How stupid! I wonder why they did that (after all, they allowed for
multiple floppy drives on the same controller). It's almsot as stupid as
POS haeving 2 storage devices (one floppy, one winchester) hard-coded
into the OS. it was multiple target like SCSI just without all the
device reservation like
SCSI)
So if the board (despite Acorn calling it SCSI) is really just SASI (or maybe
if it started life as a SASI project) then it could explain why the software
never addressed more than one target device.
Well, the Adaptec board that Acorn used in the BBC Winchester box --
which AFAIK was the first application for the host adapter -- certainly
has an address jumper.
Either that or Acorn were rather short-sighted in
their software, but they
weren't normally known for this (typically, if the hardware would do it they
seemed to think that someone would actually want to do it).
Maybe it comes down to code size and there just wasn't the room in the ADFS
That is the most likely explanation. To quote Bill Wickes 'Life is short
and ROM is full'
ROM for the device selection code (assuming that
Acorn's board contains the
necessary SCSI features anyway - I think you likely need /ATN to do device
selection?)
I will see what it says in the ACW service manual. I seem to recall it
does describe what goes on between the Host Adapter and the Adaptec board.
You made me realise that I need to archive the ROMs
from the E01 I have in the
I will do mine sometime too, in case they're different versions.
Fortunately they're socketed. I can't rememebr if you have to remove the
floppy drives to get to them, but that's not an issue for me anyway at
the momnet.. You do have to remove all that stupid plastic stuff around
the case, of course.
-tony
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ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
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