Re: Amiga Sidecar with XT-IDE?

Den Sat, 3 Aug 2019 18:31:34 +0300 skrev Ville Laustela
<ville.laustela_at_gmail.com>:
> Hi.
> 
> > Mia Magnusson <mia_at_plea.se> kirjoitti 2.8.2019 kello 11.42:
> > 
> > http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=95985
> > 
> > According to the linked thread, you can use PCPrefs to select which
> > 64k PC memory area to be used by the Janus PC-Amiga bridge, and the
> > selection seems to be Axxxx, Dxxxx and Exxxx.
> > 
> > Does this differ between the A2088 and the 1060 sidecar? My
> > impression were that they were the same.
> > 
> > If this isn't switchable, are you sure that the 1060 really uses the
> > whole C0000-DFFFF area?
> 
> I was under the impression that putting Janus everywhere else but
> Exxxx would cause problems or the Janus-Amiga communications to not
> work, but I am not completely sure. This is all a bit complex.

Oh, I just assumed that the software would work with all the settings.
Can't really understand why it would be user configurable otherwise.
> 
> > Btw, not sure if it will work but if it's possible to load XTIDE
> > from disk you might be able to have the bios on a 5.25" diskette
> > together with DOS.
> > 
> > Btw if you go for my suggestion of using a network card, you might
> > be able to fit the XTIDE-BIOS in the boot rom socket on the network
> > card. That might lead to problems though as my impression is that
> > the XTIDE stores it's settings in the BIOS and assumes that the
> > BIOS is an EEPROM. Writing to EEPROMs is surely not supported on a
> > network card.
> > 
> > Btw, if you get XTIDE-BIOS to work using the boot rom socket on a
> > network card, you won't need the XTIDE card as XTIDE BIOS can use a
> > 16-BIT ISA card in an 8-bit ISA slot and give you full functionality
> > using CF cards and 50% capacity of physical disks. With todays
> > relative large sizes of disks that's more or less free, it won't
> > matter much if you can only access say 5GB of a 10GB disk…
> 
> I am not sure if XTIDE can be loaded from file, but that would be an
> easy solution. It would still require a boot floppy, but that
> wouldn’t be too bad.

Any time in the future I'm going to investigate this a bit more. Not
Amiga related but I have a Panasonic luggable PC compatible (with CRT)
that could benefit from some kind of XTIDE too.

> Do you mean a 16-bit ISA card would work if I would get the XTIDE ROM
> loaded? Are they all 16-bit compatible of just some of them?

Afaik that works. The IDE interface uses 8-bit communications for
everything except the actual data transfers, and CF cards can be set to
an 8-bit transfer mode. The result is that every second byte is lost on
a mechanical disk, while a CF card can be used directly. 

> > P.S. what other hardware does your A1000/A1060 setup have? Most
> > other solutions is probably faster than using the A1060 + PC hard
> > disk as an Amiga hard disk.
> 
> At the moment nothing else. My A1000 has a boot selector for using a
> HxC for booting. I would like to keep the A1000 as original and just
> equip it with contemporary expansions. I am sure there would be much
> easier CPU/RAM expansions to install, but I’d like to keep the first
> one as original :)

Yeah, on an A1000 it's nice to keep stuff as original as possible. 


-- 
(\_/) Copy the bunny to your mails to help
(O.o) him achieve world domination.
(> <) Come join the dark side.
/_|_\ We have cookies.