big@ccvr1.ncsu.edu (Alan Porter) (09/29/89)
i have been wanting to get a hard drive for my 500, but i am much too
cheap to buy one. i have come up with a solution and i wanted to bounce
it off of the world for comments and suggestions. a friend of mine gave
me a 10meg miniscribe 2012 drive for an ibm a few weeks back, and a
light bulb came on in my head.
my idea is to buy a cheap ibm motherboard (and the appropriate memory,
controller and serial/parallel cards) from a cheap source (like a
hamfest or electronics flea market). i want to turn the ibm into a file
server running over the parallel or serial lines. i know, it will be
slow, but speed is not a key factor here, CHEAP is. i am planning to
write a device driver on the amiga side that makes the ibm look like a
regular disk drive. the amiga will send a packet with track and sector
information along with a command (r/w/?).
on the ibm side, a fileserver program that will read the track/sector
and send a packet of data (maybe with a primitive
cache) and whammo, a cheap hard disk! the total cost should be under
$100. $5 for the power supply, $5-10 for the motherboard, $5-10 for the
par/ser card, free hard disk, borrowed (free) controller card (xebec),
$25 or so for the miscellaneous cables, $?? for memory. the development
will be done on a friend's ibm, so i MAY not need a keyboard or
monitor card.
now i ask: what do you think? will it work? does anyone have a device
driver that may work (or help)? has anyone ever done this before? does
anyone have any better (cheaper) alternatives? suggestions? warnings?
any resposes will be appreciated.
BIG al
btw, this is my first posting.
please send any responses via email to: big@shumv1.ncsu.edu
if it bounces back, try: gar@eceugs.ncsu.edurg20+@andrew.cmu.edu (Rick Francis Golembiewski) (09/30/89)
There already exists a program that allows you to use an ibm as a 'file server' (using the par. port) however I wouldn't advise this as a cheap alternative, mainly for the following reasons: a mother board will cost you $70+ (these are the prices at dayton hamvention last year), $35+ for a power supply, $15 for a par card. $25 for a cable, $35+ for a case + 25 for 256K... Don't try to get a system without a case, unless you don't mind incredible noise around your amiga (and what ever else), not to mention having an unprotected hard drive eeeek. so your looking more along the lines of $200 even at rock bottom pricing. And your performance will really reek (28K/sec is the MAX the parallel port can do, and that will eat lots of CPU...). Take it from me you probabily will end up spending a lot more on jun that doesn't work then just getting a real controller, there are a lot of fairly good controllers for the 500, I believe there is a st506 (IBM type) controller... or you could try to get The wedge (an interface that allows you to plug an ibm hd controller into an amiga), however I warn you this might not work (it's a kit, and I'm sure the software is questionable) but it is cheap. I spent way more then I'de like to admit on the Palomax project (similar to the wedge, but it was just plans no kit), and I never got it to work... I finally just got a stardrive (a cheap scsi controller that plugs into microbotics starboard II ) and even with this comercial product the software was cheezy (it didn't support my St296N and except for the fact that someone sent me a hacked up driver I would be out of luck), and slow (~ 100K/s :-( ). The moral of the story is you get what you pay for, save up and get a nice system, it'll be worth it, and give you a lot less hassle... -Rick Golembiewski
terry@helios (Terry Ricketts) (10/03/89)
Rick Golembiewski answered a request for info on st506 interfaces as follows: >There already exists a program that allows you to use an ibm as a 'file ...plus a lot more... > I spent way more then I'de like to >admit on the Palomax project >(similar to the wedge, but it was just plans no kit), and I never got it >to work... I finally just got >a stardrive (a cheap scsi controller that plugs into microbotics >starboard II ) and even with this >comercial product the software was cheezy (it didn't support my St296N >and except for the fact > >that someone sent me a hacked up driver I would be out of luck), and >slow (~ 100K/s :-( ). >The moral of the story is you get what you pay for, save up and get a >nice system, it'll be worth >it, and give you a lot less hassle... I just wanted to add that I have succesfully built 2 of the Palomax interfaces, & have friends who have done the same. The hardware is really quite simple if you have reasonable abilities in breadboarding. My first system I built close to 2 years ago for my A1000. I put the interface, hard disk, and power supply in a single case that attaches to the side of the computer. The second unit was for my son about 11 months ago. He didn't have as much room so I built a separate box for the interface card and cabled to a box that held the power supply and hard disk. Both systems have worked flawlessly since. The software is very well put together. The only thing missing was a park command (since I am using an older style non auto park), so I ended up writing my own park command in assembler. It wasn't hard to do, and I am not a programmer. I have also heard good things about the wedge, though I have never seen one in operation. If you are a hardware hacker & feel comfortable doing it, I highly recommend the Palomax kit.
a3@mindlink.UUCP (Dave Allen) (10/03/89)
Why would someone suggest that the WEDGE for the A500 or A1000 dosent work?
Over 400 people must be seeing things :-)
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