burman@BRL-TBD.ARPA ("Norbert M. Burman", TBD-PMB-MRL) (02/27/86)
To all the hackers out there in ST land. I am posting this in the hope that someone can provide me a few clues to the following questions: 1. Has anyone tried to get their own hard disc up and running on the ST either 520 ( 512 or upgrade to 1024 k ) or 520+ ( European 1040 )? 2. What hard disc controller and also what make and size of hard disc did you use? Is there a limit to the hard disc size the ST can handle? 3. Does the ST operating system, TDOS, come with software support for the SCSI/ SASI hard disc bus built into the ST? 4. If there is no built in hard disc software support is there any mention in the developer's manuals of how to hook up and run a hard disc. 5. How does the Habba Hard Disc for the ST handle the software required to run the hard disc? Is there overlay or other software provided by Habba for TDOS or is TDOS smart enough to look at the hard disc port on cold boot? If so can you select to boot from the hard disc and does this provide autoexec software capabilities similar to that available on CP/M and PC machines? 6. What sort of hard disc controller do Habba use? Is it their own design or do they use a WD1000, Shugart 1610 or similar SCSI/SASI type controller? 7. In the November 1985 Antic magazine there is an article which shows you how to attach a 5 1/4" DSDD 40 or 80 track drive to the ST. Has anyone had a go at doing this yet? If so, were there any hassles either in the hardware or with the operation of the drive in the system? Are there any limitations to the use of this type of drive on the ST, ie. incompatability with the OS, sacrifice in file transfer speed, file transfer size limitations?. Could you use two 5 1/4" drives in place of the 3 1/2" drives if you have TDOS in ROM? I would prefer to have 700k odd capacity on discs that costs 1/3 of the 3 1/2" price. If these questions have been asked and answered previously maybe someone could mail me a copy privately. If not, I am sure that there are others out there somewhere who would like to have a go at rolling their own hard disc and maybe adding a 5 1/4" DSDD disc drive as well. For anyone interested in the 5 1/4" drives there are 96TPI (80 track) full height 5 1/4" drives available through mail order houses for about $US50 at the moment. With a case, power supply and cables you can have drive up and running for well under $US100. Beats the ATARI price by quite a few bucks and if you need it ( you might want to upgrade your PC, XT, AT to a real machine ) you will have built-in 5 1/4" IBM disc reading capability for tranfering text files to your ST. Thanks in advance for any help. Norbert Burman burman@brl-tbd.arpa