Re: Hardware Project

[david@uow.edu.au (David Wilson)]

Cap Weir <cap@thegrid.net> writes:
>I'll tell you why to build a ROM drive..... IT DON'T MOVE...

I agree. I have been running a homemade ROM disk in a clone //e for
probably the best part of this decade. This system has no hard drive
but does have an Apple 1MB "Slinky" RAMCard and a 65802 (and a pair
of clone half height Disk ][ drives to save on).

With Merlin 16 in the ROMdisk this was my main development machine for
years.

Advantages:

	It is quite - no fans or disks spinning
	It is fast - boots up to ProDOS v1.9 selector before the
	monitor has time to warm up

Disadvantages:
	I never bothered to upgrade it to v2.x as I would have to
	program another EPROM - if I built this again today I might use
	EEPROM or Flash memory to ease the upgrading.

The other reason to design and build it was the challenge.
--
David Wilson  School of IT & CS, Uni of Wollongong, Australia  david@uow.edu.au