[Coco] Q: Burke & Burke hard disk controller

[Ciaran Anscomb]

Phill Harvey-Smith wrote:
> Ciaran Anscomb wrote:
> > 
> > I recently picked up an IDE/CompactFlash
> > interface off Ebay for the BBC Master, and it is an 8-bit interface.
> 
> That wouldn't happen to be the RetroClinic one would it ? If so what do 
> you think of it ?

It is, and it's not bad at all: small, tidy and works.  Supplied with
everything you need bar the CF card.  The seller seems quite keen to
help though none was needed.  It has prompted the writing of some ADFS
manipulation software though, as random searching of the web shows
existing tools to be either shareware, only supporting later versions
(whatever variant RiscOS used), or...  not good.

> Something I started playing with, and must get back to is a 16bit IDE 
> interface for XT type computers, my idea was to buffer the high byte on
> reads, and the low byte on writes so as to take advantage of 16 bit 
> read/write operations having less fetch/execute overhead. It did make a 
> difference acording to nortons speeddisk.
>
> I guess the same principle could also be applied to the CoCo/Dragon, but 
> would probably have little advantage on the BBC, which is 6502 based, 
> from my little knolwege(sp?) of 6502, it has no 16 bit operations.

Probably not, my knowledge of 6502 is also really limited, but what I
do know makes me shudder slightly.  Can't deny the BBCs were much better
designed machines though (heresy?  Well, maybe, but they really *were*.
You'd have had to pay for that, though).

..ciaran
-- 
Ciaran Anscomb, Perl/C Hacker
Mind that parcel -- Eagle eyes can save a life!