Optron #25 19 апреля 1999

Железо

Iron - HDD at the Spectrum - Myths and Realities.

[] S. Filimonov


  The present paper, interesting
the fact that it clearly shows with what
difficulties may be encountered, thus raising the
your computer a new "gadgets" - even
standard, with the scheme and instruction. A
in fact, many believe that the connection -
even "samopala - trifling matter.



           HDD - Myths and Realities

{} Taras Nikolaychuk, 1999


    Arrakis teaches the philosophy of a knife - cut off

    all unfinished and crude, and for r
    varivaet thus: "Now all Terminated
    CHO, because over. "

        (From "Assembly sayings Muad'Dib"

         princess Irulen)


                       Frank Herbert. Dune


  This quiet horror - to sculpt your old
good Speccy new gadgets, especially
if the number exceeded the last
8-10 pieces. Tenacity with which the old group rejects the 
newcomers could serve as a the theme is not for a psychological 
drama. 

  Silently cursing, I got a new scheme devaysa and tried all 
the same to reconcile the old with the new ... 

  And it began, as always, very well.
Unpacking the packet to the controller hard drive, so 
painstakingly obtained from Peter, I can not even imagine that 
deliver itself (quite willingly) a lot of problems. Controller 
was neblshaya board the size of a matchbook and six

mikruhami. The connection does not take long
time, the benefit of this creation firm Nemo
accompanied by a small manual with
scheme (!).

  The first attempt to appeal to Winchester
failed - controller with
sponsored devaysom ignored all of it
treatment to any persuasion honestly tell such intimate 
information as the number of heads and cylinders did not yield. 
Later identified as the cause Partisan silence hard drive was 
the fact that the previous owners were forced to operate in 
Slave. So it was necessary go to IBM'schikam friends for help 
(there is no documentation on the hard drive was not 
available). 

  And here it is, the long-awaited moment - LED
controller blinked, and appeared on the screen
parameters of the hard drive. The process of splitting into
logic devices did not take much time: the issue pretty well 
covered in documentation to the controller and HELP'ah on

disk.

  Annoyed one - after the successful completion of the program 
to create logical partitions on the disk system with equal 
success was breaking. Through trial and error, managed to 
determine that this effect arose when immediately after the 
call to Controller IS-DOS to the driver

floppy disk. Deal with these glitches before
end it was not possible.

  "Trick" the system allowed electronic
drive - the system of "pumped" to him, and
Further work on setting up the hard drive
and installation of the system took place with him.
At first glance it may seem that such work does not make sense, 
but it is only until long as you do not copy to hard drive

the entire system and not make it a system
device. Then the only inconvenience will be interaction with 
the outside world - all files with the disk drive must be 
download first on electronic disk as well then on the hard 
drive. 

  It should be noted that the benefits of the hard drive still 
outweigh "(especially given that I work a lot with texts and 
printer). 

  Thus, the desire to work with "screw" prevailed, and began 
the most "interesting" work - vpihivanie the controller in an 
enclosure ie decision once the puzzle - how to

connect and how to do here, so
"Newbie" normally "get along" with the rest
boards. As the saying goes, "feeling about me
not fooled - everything worked perfectly
"Loose", completely refused to work in
assembly. Alternate method of "pulling"
Boards were able to establish that a conflict arose with the 
board ZX-LPRINTIII + SoundDrive. 

  After analysis of the scheme revealed that decoding addresses 
in the ZX-LPRINT made sufficiently rough and needs a little 
finishing touch: 



     A1 A0 ID7 14

           A1 o old A2

           A2


     A0 E3

     A2 oE2

          oE1



  A few words about how ISDOS-ovsky software running on this 
hardware. 

  Immediately sorry - work, mainly
only new programs and old will have
"Juzat 'the old way - with disovoda. Thus, by
queue:

  1) LUXPRINT - dull room;

  2) ZXMODEM - the same;

  3) LOTUS - everything works except the editor
fonts, ie, printing text and pictures, and
also konvertalka screens - are working perfectly;

  4) PICASSO - works fine (as far as can be called "normal" 
work with them), only after the removal of driver

floppy disk;

  5) GFX - after swapping the font in the printer
loves to spoil the last directory;

  6) Databases - I have not tried to run, but most likely they 
do not work be. The firm promised to release Iskrasoft

special versions for HDD.

  Other programs - EDITOR, PRINT, ets
- Operate quite normally.

  For these things will add that to complete
controller attached the new system ISDOS, has a slightly 
different structure header drive (the drive name was longer than

2-3 bytes). And therefore the old drives will be
"Seen" in the new system only after the prescription of 
characters in the index disk DSK (Immediately after the old 
DSK). Firm Iskrasoft developed the ability to boot the system 
with Winchester. To do this, the ROM TRDOS stitched 452-byte 
bootloader. Unfortunately, disk driver not found. If anyone has 
information about dealing with this problems, please napisat to 
the Editor (or directly to me).