If an IDE interface can be grafted on to the external 1MHz bus then I see no reason why the same cannot be done for the Master internal 1MHz bus interface.
However, I would hope it can be avoided. IDE isn't a natural fit for BBC era machines, and has involved bodging ADFS to use a different command set and different sector size. Since the advent of BeebSCSI and later Pi1MHz SCSI, we can now use (externally) the original, unmodified ADFS 1.30 or ADFS 1.50 with hard drives. This is especially valuable in the case of the Master where ADFS 1.50 is already in the system ROM, so it's more inconvenient, but not impossible, to introduce a modified version of ADFS.
From what I've seen, there is no IDE solution which can manipulate hard disc images with the simplicity of BeebSCSI & Pi1MHz, where the disc image itself is a normal file on an actual file system, so it can easily be copied anywhere and used. Everything I have seen with IDE (and indeed many of the SCSI interface emulators before BeebSCSI) need direct sector access to the memory card which complicates things considerably.
All that would be needed here is for someone to adapt the "internal VFS adapter" which BeebSCSI uses to plug into the Master internal bus, to take a Pi Zero instead of a BeebSCSI board. It may just work straight off, but the internal VFS adapter I am using isn't mine so I can't risk blowing it up, and I don't really want to risk blowing up Station 112 again either.
However, I would hope it can be avoided. IDE isn't a natural fit for BBC era machines, and has involved bodging ADFS to use a different command set and different sector size. Since the advent of BeebSCSI and later Pi1MHz SCSI, we can now use (externally) the original, unmodified ADFS 1.30 or ADFS 1.50 with hard drives. This is especially valuable in the case of the Master where ADFS 1.50 is already in the system ROM, so it's more inconvenient, but not impossible, to introduce a modified version of ADFS.
From what I've seen, there is no IDE solution which can manipulate hard disc images with the simplicity of BeebSCSI & Pi1MHz, where the disc image itself is a normal file on an actual file system, so it can easily be copied anywhere and used. Everything I have seen with IDE (and indeed many of the SCSI interface emulators before BeebSCSI) need direct sector access to the memory card which complicates things considerably.
All that would be needed here is for someone to adapt the "internal VFS adapter" which BeebSCSI uses to plug into the Master internal bus, to take a Pi Zero instead of a BeebSCSI board. It may just work straight off, but the internal VFS adapter I am using isn't mine so I can't risk blowing it up, and I don't really want to risk blowing up Station 112 again either.
Statistics: Posted by BeebMaster — Wed Jul 03, 2024 10:04 am