Introduce yourself

[BigDumbDinosaur]

ElEctric_EyE wrote:

I think this community here would be very interested in a 6502 hardware interface to a modern style IDE HDD. BDD has used his SCSI interface successfully, which is impressive, but IDE is more common and thus cheaper. Please start a new thread if you desire, but no pressure!

What would be even more interesting would be interfacing SATA hardware, which would open the door to current commodity storage technology. That said, I'm not inclined to deviate from SCSI at this time.

[ElEctric_EyE]

Not so interesting if one looks at the IC's used for this technology are generally built for newer desktop PC motherboards and that's it. Personally I'm not so interested in serial data storage when 16-bit video is involved, this is why I have no interest it massive USB or SPI FLASH.
Again, I had wished this HDD discussion would have been started/continued on another appropriate thread.

[nyef]

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

What would be even more interesting would be interfacing SATA hardware, which would open the door to current commodity storage technology. That said, I'm not inclined to deviate from SCSI at this time.

From what I recall, the original "ATA" interface was designed to be trivially interfaced with the bus on the PC/AT, hence the name "AT Attachement". I haven't looked into it in detail yet, but I suspect that a polled-mode interface (no DMA) might be fairly simple to implement... And there are PATA to SATA adaptors so that you can run the newer SATA drives in older PATA systems. Combine the two, and you could end up with north of a terabyte of storage on a 6502 system, which might be just the tiniest bit of overkill.

[ElEctric_EyE]

I was unaware these adapters were available, and they're cheap too ~11$US. Thanks!

EDIT: A SSD is something to consider.

[cbscpe]

Hi,

First about my computer. It's built using Verowire. I like it very much. Although the combs have gotten expensive (1USD per unit when it was 1USD per 10 units about 15 years ago). Second I will open a thread about the HDD Interfaces I have built for my Apple II, which as we all know are 6502 based.

Peter

[BigDumbDinosaur]

nyef wrote:

From what I recall, the original "ATA" interface was designed to be trivially interfaced with the bus on the PC/AT, hence the name "AT Attachement".

Correct on that. Back when ATA came about we often referred to it as the accountant-mentality interface, as cost obviously was much more important than performance.

Quote:

And there are PATA to SATA adaptors so that you can run the newer SATA drives in older PATA systems. Combine the two, and you could end up with north of a terabyte of storage on a 6502 system, which might be just the tiniest bit of overkill.

As it stands right now, POC V1.1 can theoretically address approximately 14.336 terabytes of disk storage. However, the largest parallel SCSI drives currently available are 300GB, so the practical limit would be 2.1TB, assuming a drive was attached to all seven available SCSI IDs.

[cbscpe]

I wonder when a 6502 system would need Gigabytes or even Terabytes. I'd rather build a Network interface to access a server.

[BigDumbDinosaur]

cbscpe wrote:

I wonder when a 6502 system would need Gigabytes or even Terabytes. I'd rather build a Network interface to access a server.

You could, but there's something to be said about being able to have a system that is capable of operating without reliance on another computer.

[cbscpe]

BDD, sure you are right, but nobody said you cannot have both, local storage and network. It's much the same with my overall work on current systems. When no network is available I still need to do my job and when connected to the network again I can update the server or retrieve updates.

[player55328]

I have been around for a few months but never really introduced myself...

I'm Ken and work for Xerox in Wilsonville Oregon. I am a programmer in the print head group.

I had a C64 in high school, that got me started. Got a AS degree in electronics from BMCC where one of my projects was working with an Apple II. Worked in Silicon Valley for a while where I was exposed to the 68000. Went to Texas Instruments where I got to do a lot of the digital control for a radar system since they had failed to hire anyone except RF engineers. Worked at RFM using SAW technology. Came back to Oregon to work for Tektronix where I worked in the Workstation Division on huge graphics boards, got really good with logic analyzers. I ended up in the printer division which Xerox bought and am still there. I write mostly internal software for R&D and transfer some of it to production. I write calibration software so the heads can make pretty pictures, this involves postscript and C++. I also designed the databases we use so that involves SQL and C#. The printers and now heads use FPGA's, that got me interested in Verilog. I have purchased a few development boards and made a bootable C64. I really love sequential logic so that pushes me to get the most out of a design. I also love Chess and wrote a C# GUI that will host engines for game play or analysis, eventually I would like to write my own engine.

If anyone here thinks I could give them a hand writing some Verilog for a project I will be open to it.

Ken

[barrym95838]

Welcome, Ken.

I am putting some finishing touches on a simulator (written in C) for a home-grown 32-bit microprocessor. When I get it compiled cleanly and debugged, I would certainly welcome your input on the best way to 'translate' it (maybe 'adapt' is a better word) to Verilog. I know that those languages are significantly different in many ways, but are in some ways similar, and I am interested in expanding my horizons in that direction, real-life permitting.

Thanks,

Mike

[Snial]

Quote:

From what I recall, the original "ATA" interface was designed to be trivially interfaced with the bus on the PC/AT, hence the name "AT Attachement".

The ATA acronym was invented much later than the drives themselves. Originally PC hard drives were basically raw & a PC needed a card to drive it, which for the first HD equipped PC/XT was the seagate ST-506 controller card.

In the meantime Shugart Associates created the intelligent interface SASI which was standardized as SCSI. Here, the controller was effectively attached to the drive (well, its enclosure).

So IDE was created to compete with SCSI, but all it was, was an ST-506 card bolted to the drive, hence "Integrated Drive Electronics". Only later was it re-termed ATA, But the protocol was still the same.

-cheers julz

[player55328]

Sounds good!

[BigDumbDinosaur]

player55328 wrote:

I have been around for a few months but never really introduced myself...

Welcome to our little 6502 world.

[ElEctric_EyE]

player55328 wrote:

...If anyone here thinks I could give them a hand writing some Verilog for a project I will be open to it.

Ken

Welcome Ken! It's great to see people fluent in Verilog post on this site. I skimmed over your 6510 code. Definately interesting what one can do with Verilog.