tregare Posted February 25, 2010 Share Posted February 25, 2010 (edited) anyone know of a source for the fabled HDI disk interface? *Edit alert! (sigh, lysdexia strikes again) should have been HDI not HID. Edited February 25, 2010 by tregare Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+CharlieChaplin Posted February 25, 2010 Share Posted February 25, 2010 Hmm, you mean something like this: http://www.atari-central.de/floppyservice/floppy/gb/hdi.htm the floppy interface is not only sold out, some of its parts are no longer being made, so at the moment there is no chance to re-build this interface without changing the design (and the required parts). Think if you send an e-mail to its creator Erhard Puetz he will send you schematics and source-code to his HDI. On the other hand, Candle wants to create a new hardware for the A8 that houses a hard disk and a flash-chip at the same time and there are already various SIO2xxx devices (SIO2SD, SIO2USB, SDrive, etc.) for the A8 so there is no need for this disk-interface anymore (in my opinion!)... But if you still want a floppy drive, why not buy an XF551 with 360k 5,25" drive or turn the XF into a 720k 3,5" drive...?!? -Andreas Koch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fox-1 / mnx Posted February 25, 2010 Share Posted February 25, 2010 It was made by Erhard Puetz, member of ABBUC and owner of http://www.atari-central.de/ AFAIK the required floppy controller is not available anymore, anywhere... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fox-1 / mnx Posted February 25, 2010 Share Posted February 25, 2010 Hmm, attaching a file in edit mode doesn't seem to work so an extra post... The schematic of the HDI is in TIF format but I had to ZIP it since TIF's are not supported over here. sch_hdi.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tregare Posted February 25, 2010 Author Share Posted February 25, 2010 It was made by Erhard Puetz, member of ABBUC and owner of http://www.atari-central.de/ AFAIK the required floppy controller is not available anymore, anywhere... I can probably dig up a compatible chip... it depends on what chip it uses. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tregare Posted February 25, 2010 Author Share Posted February 25, 2010 Hmm, you mean something like this: http://www.atari-central.de/floppyservice/floppy/gb/hdi.htm the floppy interface is not only sold out, some of its parts are no longer being made, so at the moment there is no chance to re-build this interface without changing the design (and the required parts). Think if you send an e-mail to its creator Erhard Puetz he will send you schematics and source-code to his HDI. On the other hand, Candle wants to create a new hardware for the A8 that houses a hard disk and a flash-chip at the same time and there are already various SIO2xxx devices (SIO2SD, SIO2USB, SDrive, etc.) for the A8 so there is no need for this disk-interface anymore (in my opinion!)... But if you still want a floppy drive, why not buy an XF551 with 360k 5,25" drive or turn the XF into a 720k 3,5" drive...?!? -Andreas Koch. because I'm a masochist there is just something about the sound of floppy drives that I like on an older machine. I have an indus GT (that i am designing a SRAM 'ramcharger' PCB for and will do a run of the PCB's when I finish it. several 1050's with various DD mods in them (and stock) an XF 551 and I'm working on a XF551 compatible controller, although if I could get the rom/source and schematic of the XF-Speedy I'd dump the 8040 chip and use a 6502 on the board. what little I was able to find on the XF-speedy indicates it was an add on board that plugged into the 8040 socket that had a 6502 and ram on it, and a replacement rom that plugged into the rom socket (or the rom was on the board with 6502) it wasn't clear. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fox-1 / mnx Posted February 25, 2010 Share Posted February 25, 2010 More info: http://atariwiki.strotmann.de/xwiki/bin/view/Code/HDISource About the hardware set-up, a quote from a Klaus Peters "Speedy-XF" review: " The kit consists of two printed boards, which are quite big, and a small switch. The printed boards replaces the CPU of the disk-drive. Because the CPU is soldered into the board of the drive, you have to solder it out and replace it with a socket. After that you also have to remove the ROM of the XF-551 drive and a small wire, which was not included, must be connected to one of the pins of the I/O socket. Last but not least, the small switch must be glued into the drive-mechanism. " Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mathy Posted February 25, 2010 Share Posted February 25, 2010 Hello guys I found the following pictures of the SpeedyXF via Google who found it via XLsearch: ftp://ftp.pigwa.net/stuff/collections/atari_forever/Zdjecia/Unconventional%202000/030%20Speedy%20XF.jpg ftp://ftp.pigwa.net/stuff/collections/atari_forever/Zdjecia/Unconventional%202000/031%20Speedy%20XF%202.jpg ftp://ftp.pigwa.net/stuff/collections/atari_forever/Zdjecia/Unconventional%202000/032%20Speedy%20XF%203.jpg greetings Mathy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mathy Posted February 25, 2010 Share Posted February 25, 2010 Hello guys XLsearch rocks! This should be a picture of the HDI interface: greetings Mathy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tregare Posted February 25, 2010 Author Share Posted February 25, 2010 More info: http://atariwiki.strotmann.de/xwiki/bin/view/Code/HDISource About the hardware set-up, a quote from a Klaus Peters "Speedy-XF" review: " The kit consists of two printed boards, which are quite big, and a small switch. The printed boards replaces the CPU of the disk-drive. Because the CPU is soldered into the board of the drive, you have to solder it out and replace it with a socket. After that you also have to remove the ROM of the XF-551 drive and a small wire, which was not included, must be connected to one of the pins of the I/O socket. Last but not least, the small switch must be glued into the drive-mechanism. " thank you, I'd heard 3 or 4th hand about it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Larry Posted February 26, 2010 Share Posted February 26, 2010 These were unfortunately made with a version of a 6520 (IIRC) that had to be overclocked -- doubled, I believe. This chip was impossible to find (at least in the U.S.) 15 or so years ago. The closest you can probably come is to find a Black Box and Floppy Board. Although the FB is rock-solid in DD (720K) both mine are a little flaky using 1.44 HD disks. I would say that I typically lost access to 1-2% of the files over a year or so. Probably no worse than using 1.44's with a Win machine, but if you lose the wrong file... -Larry anyone know of a source for the fabled HDI disk interface? *Edit alert! (sigh, lysdexia strikes again) should have been HDI not HID. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mathy Posted February 26, 2010 Share Posted February 26, 2010 Hello guys The problem was the 6532 IIRC, you need the 4MHz version, which is hard to find. The PIA in the BlackBox is a 1MHz version. greetings Mathy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HiassofT Posted February 26, 2010 Share Posted February 26, 2010 The problem was the 6532 IIRC, you need the 4MHz version, which is hard to find. The PIA in the BlackBox is a 1MHz version. You remember correctly, it was the 6532 and the HDI needed a 4MHz type. According to Erhard Pütz the problem was that the 4MHz 6532 was announced but never released, but Erhard discovered that a few batches of the 2MHz 6532 also worked fine at 4MHz. The 6532 in my HDI died and Erhard replaced it with another one - but this later one didn't work 100% reliable :-( I started to do some experiments and discovered that it worked better if I increased the power supply voltage to 5.1-5.2V. But I still got some occasional errors - very few, maybe one or two a day, but still too many to use the HDI as my primary storage device - so it's sitting unused on my desk for some 15 years by now... so long, Hias Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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