Re: S6 or S5,d1-??

[Matt Jenkins <mdj@bilby.cs.rmit.edu.au>]

Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net> wrote:

>      A2 diskette drive cabling and interface hardware supports two of any
> identifiable drive type per standard daisy chain interface. You can not chain
> more than two 5.25" drives because the Select lines for additional 5.25"
> drives do no exist.

>      A few hardware workarounds would allow using more drives. For example, a
> single disk interface card could offer several drive ports, each with a
> connector for a chain of drives.

>      Mods to DOS 3.3 and ProDOS would allow taking advantage of the extra
> drives available via the special interface. Since the card would be located
> in some Slot, access would still involve selecting that Slot and specifying a
> drive-- such as Slot 6, Drive 7.

Well, ProDOS wouldn't need to be modified for this to work. The later
versions will support additional devices in a slot, mapping each one to a
s,d combo until it runs out. You can access the other devices by pathname
tho.

It'd be fairly easy to build a SmartPort card that allowed more than 4
devices. What I'd like is revised firmware for the Unidisk 3.5" controller
(aka Liron, or SmartPort) card so that it would support 5.25" disks as
well, kinda like the //c does it, except not using any of slot 5's IO space
so I could re-use that slot for another card. I'm pretty sure this could be
done, but you wouldn't be able to boot the machine off the 3.5" drive which
kinda sucks.

Cheers,

Matt

If the problem is related to large hard disks with many partitions, you
could use the High Speed SCSI card or the RamFast which will allow all
partitions to be visible to ProDOS. Older cards are often limited to only
allowing two partitions mapped to the two drives in the slot it's in.
-- 
              Matt(hew) Jenkins. Computer Science (RMIT Bundoora)
                           email: mdj@cs.rmit.edu.au
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