meulenbr@cst.prl.philips.nl (Frans Meulenbroeks) (06/07/91)
I've heard rumours in the past that future TT versions will be equipped with a HD floppy drive. This leads to the following questions: - Is this rumour true? and if so: - Has there been mentioned anything about the time frame in which this should occur? - will it be possible to upgrade current TT's? Thanks for the info! -- Frans Meulenbroeks (meulenbr@prl.philips.nl) Centre for Software Technology
meulenbr@cst.prl.philips.nl (Frans Meulenbroeks) (06/11/91)
seimet@rhrk.uni-kl.de (Uwe Seimet [Chemie]) writes:
]With the TT and MegaSTE-versions delivered in the moment you can use a HD
]floppy drive right from the start, you have just to plug it in.
]If you use HD discs in this drive, TOS first recognizes a read error. It
]automatically switches the speed of the floppy controller to 16 MHz and tries
]again. So some kind of the hardware presented in ST Computer 1/90 (HD drives
]for the ST) is built in.
]Nevertheless I found two problems. My controller doesn't work correctly with
]HD discs if the machine has warmed up. Apparently the controller doesn't like
]16 MHz too much. If you use programs like ROMRAM or ROMSPEED you get problems
]writing on these discs. It seems as if this is a timing problem, because after
]moving the rom to the fast ram the floppy subroutines of TOS are to fast and
]report a timeout.
]To get a button "High Density" in the desktop format dialogue you have to set
]configuration switch #6 to ON. Selecting this button to format a HD disc fails
]on TOS 3.01 but wait for TOS 3.05 ...
Does this mean that there is a HD drive installed.
The latest I heard was that apparently the current 1772 floppy disk
controller is only rated for 8 mhz, and you'll need a 16 Mhz version
for HD drives. It seems that Western Digital does not manufacture such
a version, but that atari bought the rights and is going to manufacture
its own chip.
--
Frans Meulenbroeks (meulenbr@prl.philips.nl)
Centre for Software Technologyseimet@rhrk.uni-kl.de (Uwe Seimet [Chemie]) (06/12/91)
>Does this mean that there is a HD drive installed. >The latest I heard was that apparently the current 1772 floppy disk >controller is only rated for 8 mhz, and you'll need a 16 Mhz version >for HD drives. It seems that Western Digital does not manufacture such >a version, but that atari bought the rights and is going to manufacture >its own chip. There is no HD drive installed (yet). You are right that the 1772 is designed for a rate of 8 mhz but this is not the first time 16 mhz are used (remember ST-Computer 1/90, 2/90). Of course a 16 mhz version were the best but at the moment the 8 mhz version works at at rate of 16 mhz when you use hd drives. ******************************************************** * Uwe Seimet * * seimet@sun.rhrk.uni-kl.de * *------------------------------------------------------* * I hate this machine, I wish that they would sell it. * * It doesn't what I want but only what I tell it. * * (Programmer's lament) * ********************************************************