[sebhc] HDOS & IDE (was: H-8 question from a new list member)

Jack Rubin jack.rubin at ameritech.net
Thu Apr 1 12:07:42 CST 2004


Ron,
 
This is a great idea, and something I was considering as well (though more in the role of "facilitator" rather than designer; I get lost pretty quickly once I'm done to the component level). The FLEX user's group just did exactly this, but in SS-30 format for the 6809. Schematics and driver source are available; if you don't have access, let me know and I will forward info to you. Using PCexpress, bareboard per unit cost was about $20.
 
As for partitions, what is the max drive size that HDOS will support? 
 
The other thing that I would like to see in a new form factor is the XCON board for those of us still running 8080 systems. This raises the knotty issue of copyrighted ROM code, but that's a question for another time.
 
And of course, if you're sticking a new board in the box, why not add a couple SRAM chips and 32/64/128/whatever K of decent memory? My running '8 is using two 32K SRAMs sitting on about 1/8 of an otherwise bare prototype board.
 
You could do all this, including mounting a 2.5" laptop drive (or IDE flash card) on a single full-size card and still have room left over!
 
Jack

"West, Ronald S." <RONALD.S.WEST at saic.com> wrote:
I am working on designing an IDE port for my H-8. I have found a few designs
on the web that are not for the H-8 directly but can be used as a good start
for the project (IDE connector pin outs, etc.).

As part of this I will put the IDE port on a plug in board (the wirewrap
board) and will mount it and a small laptop hard drive (175MB) inside the
H-8.

If all goes well I will have drives that show up as SY0, 1, 2, etc. and are
5MB or 10MB or so in size. It should speed up complicated compiles greatly.
The hard part will be the device driver. Have not written a device driver
for HDOS in a very long time so hopefully it will all come back to me ;^D

Has anyone heard of someone doing this with the H-8 or H-89 already? Sure
would be nice to help shortcut the development time and get to other cool
stuff. I have some other ideas also but they all kind of hinge on getting
away from the old floppys that are slow and failing quickly.

Thanks,

Ron
[wb4oum]
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