PET IDE Harddisk and Serial Interface

A hardware interface between a Commodore PET Computer (such as the CBM 8032) and an IDE disk drive (with a bonus serial interface). Unlike other approaches, this interface does NOT require a PC or other computer that emulates a hard disk, instead a real IDE drive is connected directly (through the interface) to the PET/CBM, and no special software needs to be loaded into the PET since the interface emulates a standard Commodore disk drive. A serial interface is also provided.

Friday, March 25, 2005

RENAME command implemented

Saturday, March 12, 2005

INITIALIZE command implemented

This was a tough one...NOT. The INITIALIZE command is used to tell a CBM disk drive that the media was changed and that the drive should re-read the disk. The more modern drives have a microswitch or other sensor to detect disk removal and would auto-initialize. Since you cannot change the media on your hard-disk drive, this command doesn't do anything on this IDE interface, it is just validated for syntax.

HEADER (NEW) command implemented

The HEADER command is succesfully implemented. Quick refresher on this BASIC 4.0 command:

header "name",d*[,onu*][,i**]

If the i** optional parameter is provided, the entire disk is formatted, otherwise only the BAM/directory are formatted (faster). In either case, all files are deleted. A full format (i.e. WITH identifier) of a Seagate 850 MB drive took 65 minutes. A quick-format (i.e. without identifier) of the same drive took just 5 minutes.

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