Jump to content
IGNORED

An odd find


Mehridian Sanders

Recommended Posts

So the wife and I bargain hunt .. almost predatory. I just started selling some of the stuff on Ebay amd I openned a case to find this internal zip drive. Haven't done much searching, but have people tried to integrate this to the TI99? Doubt it but *shrug* never hurts to ask.

 

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If proper support could be arranged, an LS-120 on a nanopeb would be interesting.

 

It was back-compatible with floppy diskettes.

 

Sadly the CF slot on the nanopeb does not properly support the IDE spec. (True CF is an ATA IDE interface with additional signals and power rails. Because the nanopeb does not work like that and only writes half-sectors, it probably would not work with internal zip 100, or LS120. Scsi might be an option in actual PEB though, or ltp zip100 on CF7.)

 

LS120 support would be interesting. Nice hybrid target between permanent storage and floppy drive.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

36 minutes ago, --- Ω --- said:

I remember zip drives.  The disks were way overpriced and if I remember correctly if you formatted a disk that was like $10.00 flushed.  They were slow too if I remember correctly.  A TIPI with it"s SD card will give the TI much more storage.

Agreed. Zip was overpriced and slow. LS120 at least can read and write 3.5 in floppy diskettes, making it an interesting idea for the nanopeb. (Or, in a USB enclosure, docked on a tipi). 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If memory serves, the TI equipped with a SCSI card could use a SCSI Zip drive. I still own 2 external parallel port 10mb Zip drives which I use with my IBM PCjr. They work perfectly fine and are really great for large files. I also used one back in the late 90's to store patient encounters created using Dragon Dictate. For the time, these drives provided cheap backup storage and were far easier to use than tape drives.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The bad thing about Zip disks was that a physically damaged disk could "infect" drives with the "Click of Death" (where the damaged disk literally ripped the heads off and left them dangling, which would then subsequently damage disks inserted afterwards). The actual clicking was just the normal head retraction mechanism in use when there is difficulty reading the disk.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the input gang. Was leaning towards just selling it on ebay anyway. Enough Info here to push my interest away from keeping it. I remember having the external blue enclosure when I was younger. Hard to recall specifics on it. Welp to ebay it goes. Thanks again. :)

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

Link to comment
Share on other sites


So the wife and I bargain hunt .. almost predatory. I just started selling some of the stuff on Ebay amd I openned a case to find this internal zip drive. Haven't done much searching, but have people tried to integrate this to the TI99? Doubt it but *shrug* never hurts to ask.
 
Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk
 
 
No way to make it work.. no drivers

Sent from my LM-G820 using Tapatalk

Link to comment
Share on other sites

34 minutes ago, arcadeshopper said:

No way to make it work.. no drivers

Sent from my LM-G820 using Tapatalk
 

It's fundamentally an ATA-ATAPI device.  It *should* be supportable by any device that supports PATA standards. Again, if the nanopeb fully supported the CF spec (which it does not), it would support having this drive stuck on in place of the CF module. (Just power the drive seperately.)

 

As-Is, it COULD be slaved onto a TIPI using a USB to IDE enclosure. Linux totally has drivers. :P

 

 

EDIT

 

Example-- A combination of this product

https://www.newegg.com/p/0VN-00M5-000U1?Description=external dvd drive enclosure&cm_re=external_dvd_drive_enclosure-_-9SIAHBUAA03702-_-Product

 

With a SATA to IDE bridge

https://www.newegg.com/p/1Z4-00YN-00C87?Description=sata IDE bridge&cm_re=sata_IDE_bridge-_-9SIAHBUAAA2012-_-Product

 

In the 3.5" to 5.25" bay adapter it is already living in (which gives room for the adapter!)

 

Plugged into a USB port on the Pi, which is attached to the TIPI.

 

:P

 

Personally though, I would do that with an LS-120, like I said.  That gives me a floppy drive.

Edited by wierd_w
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yep you can use it with a pi. That wasn't the question.

The nanopeb directly addresses the cf card via a specific ide to cf card. Not compatible with the generic ide standard.

There's an IDE controller board for the TI but you got to build it yourself. Not sure it will work either tho.

Sent from my LM-G820 using Tapatalk

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The internal zip100 can boot DOS.  It does not need drivers. It impersonates an HDD, but with the "removable" bit set.

 

(And, Again, CF is a specialized subset of IDE ATA.  For reals yo. That the nanopeb does not support IDE devices indicates that it is not a standards compliant CF socket. :P)

Edited by wierd_w
Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Mehridian Sanders said:

 I remember having the external blue enclosure when I was younger. 

 

Same here.  Storage back then was not as cheap as it is now now days.  The one you see in the photo of my computer space back in 1999 was only one cent... probably because they took you to the cleaners on the disks!  I was never impressed with it.

 

952684_Space1999.thumb.jpg.6a06c4ee787da2f9d075944a79eb68fa.jpg

 

 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 minutes ago, arcadeshopper said:

Yep it addresses the cf directly. Not sure the details but it's not ide it will never be ide

The drive likely will work in the ide controller if you make one for yourself ymmv

http://mainbyte.com/ti99/hardware/peb/ide_card.html



Sent from my LM-G820 using Tapatalk
 

Mainbyte is linking to a dead link.

 

Archive.org to the rescue.

https://web.archive.org/web/20001009013014/http://www.stanford.edu/~thierry1/ti99/titechpages.htm

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, arcadeshopper said:

Yep it addresses the cf directly. Not sure the details but it's not ide it will never be ide

 

Actually, as I recall (2 years ago?) looking at the DSR code of the nanoPEB and @F.G. Kaal’s DM for the nanoPEB/CF7, IDE commands are used to access the CF. One problem is that Jaime Malilong did not have enough room in the DSR for more code than is there now, without implementing switching of DSR banks. And, of course, there is the problem of managing 256-byte sectors in a 512-byte world. There was definitely not enough DSR room for managing odd TI sectors differently from even ones, so he opted for using only half a CF sector, cutting the CF capacity by half. He is handling 512 bytes at a time—just not dealing with the second 256.

 

...lee

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, Vorticon said:

If memory serves, the TI equipped with a SCSI card could use a SCSI Zip drive. I still own 2 external parallel port 10mb Zip drives which I use with my IBM PCjr. They work perfectly fine and are really great for large files. I also used one back in the late 90's to store patient encounters created using Dragon Dictate. For the time, these drives provided cheap backup storage and were far easier to use than tape drives.

Yep, I use an SCSI Zip drive on my Macintosh SE/30 and a USB Zip drive on a current Mac, making it a great way to transfer files over. That said, SD carts like the FinalGROM99 and other options already mentioned make it so this is unnecessary on the TI-99/4A, but thought I'd chime in that you weren't far off with your idea, @Mehridian Sanders!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I implemented CF7 and compatible CF emulation in Classic99. It uses the IDE drive emulation mode with 8-bit registers. Read registers are every odd byte starting at >5Exx, and writes are at >5Fxx (while the CF card is mapped into the DSR space, which is done with the usual CRU bit 0 at >1100). The DSR is derived from the TI DSR, with some patches for I/O, different startup, and extra subprograms.

 

The DSR itself only uses the commands READ and WRITE (in LBA mode), IDENTIFY, and FEATURES (to turn off 8-bit access mode, IIRC). It uses 16-bit access mode although the hardware supports only 8-bit. 

 

For my Dragon's Lair programming I proved that 8-bit mode works on the hardware, but it only worked on about a third of the cards I tried. Cards that didn't work usually duplicated the data, though one only provided 3 bytes out of every 4. Very odd. 

 

There's also something strange in the hardware that causes some cards to simply lock up the system, and others don't respond at all. I didn't look into this.

 

The data is stored without any file system or information block - every drive image is 400 sectors long starting with sector 0. The mount information is stored in the unused data at the beginning of the first image.

 

At startup, the DSR checks if the card has a standard partition header, and if it's there, it is blown away. So never power up a card in the CF7 that might have PC files you want on it. ;)

 

Anyway, long story short, any hard drive has a good chance of working on the adapter, provided it's electrically okay and the timing works out. ATAPI devices should be electrically compatible but you will need to write the software to access files on them.

 

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I bought a Dell Optiplex at a thrift store for $4.99.  Mainly because it had an internal zip drive.  But I also salvaged the IDE hard drive, IDE cables, etc.  Not a bad deal. ?

 

So that zip drive will probably collect dust and never get used.  Not sure why I thought I would ever use it.  lol

 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/26/2019 at 3:52 AM, DragonGrafx-16 said:

Zip drives were crap... and why would anyone bother these days with them? And besides... what would a TI99 need with like 100MB of storage? lol

I dunno.  Zip drives served me well on my Amiga systems for around a decade or so.  I used them for data storage, transfer, and even booting into different usage or testing environments (for instance, one has a load of Workbench 1.3 on it for various purposes, while another is a DOS boot environment for PC-Task.)

 

I was asked the same question about storage then, too, but then more and more software became properly capable of hard drive installation, games got bigger, and WHDLoad came about.  I remember when I out-grew my 200MB SCSI hard drive and installed a 4GB drive -- oh, what a glorious day!

 

In relation to the TI, my 256MB SD card can hold plenty of disk images or copies, copies of programs from tape, etc.  Sure, I could store all that on PC, and I do (or rather on my NAS,) but I also like to keep it on the original system.  When I kick the bucket, anything I might have of value to the TI, Amiga, Commodore, etc. on my NAS will likely be ignored or discarded.

 

On 10/26/2019 at 9:31 AM, LocalH said:

The bad thing about Zip disks was that a physically damaged disk could "infect" drives with the "Click of Death"

Legitimate concern which I have never run into, thankfully.  The cause of the original "click of death" I believe was dealt with mid-life of the Zip 100 drives before they moved to 250MB and (I think) 750MB.

 

I keep a bunch of these old media drives across various interfaces on-hand for specialized recovery jobs.  A few years back I had to read a bunch of old 5.25" floppies for a company.  Another job was to restore some backups from an old QIC tape which required a floppy controller interface.  Just this year I copied data from a Zip 100 disk for a customer.  I have not yet put any of my old Syquest stuff to use and I think the one external Syquest SparQ I have is actually no longer working (talk about garbage, remember those?)

 

I have not run into an ATAPI or SCSI drive which needs a driver, though most offer some level of advanced features, such as encryption, data wipe, icons, diagnostics, and so on.  Externals, though, are usually parallel port and you definitely need a driver for those.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/26/2019 at 9:37 PM, Tursi said:

At startup, the DSR checks if the card has a standard partition header, and if it's there, it is blown away. So never power up a card in the CF7 that might have PC files you want on it.

Oh, ouch!  I suppose if there was more room in the DSR ROM for it this could be made an option with something like, say, CALL PREP to prepare the card.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...