On 11/30/09, Cameron Kaiser <spectre@floodgap.com> wrote: >> This board is also the reason why I disassembled FDC-ROM to find out how >> the SASI protocol works. The idea behind it is quite simple: replace >> this "middle board" with a micro-controler and an IDE hard disk or SD >> card. But so far I wasn't able to understand the protocol :( For those >> who say "SASI is like SCSI", I know, but this knowledge didn't help me >> very much. > > It's more like SCSI is like SASI. I have the same problem with Alpha Micro > SASI systems. They'll die if you look at them wrong. One of my long-unfinished projects was to disassemble the "DOS board" ROMs to see what sorts of SASI packets were being sent to the drive to see about hacking the firmware to talk to a modern embedded-SCSI drive and bypass the entire SASI-MFM-drive part of the unit - just go from the Commodore board right to a 50-pin 3.5" drive. I still have a small stack of 40MB-1GB units lying about. As a secondary project, I thought about implementing unit numbers in the firmware so that you could use more than 16MB of a larger drive. In the grand scheme of things, though, once I got a real D9090 working in the first place using a more common drive mechanism, the urgency of hacking the ROM code faded substantially. I still think it'd be a good project, but really, there are so many modern FLASHROM-based projects for Commodore gear that if you just want to transcend the limitations of 5.25" floppies, there are many, many easier ways than deep hacking a rare bit of gear. -ethan Message was sent through the cbm-hackers mailing listReceived on 2009-11-30 17:00:04
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