Jump to content
IGNORED

Atari SupraDrive


MrFish

Recommended Posts

I came across this in the Atari FAQ while researching the Supra Hard Drive / Interface. Can anybody verify the Miniscribe as the 20 MB 3.5" version that was sold?

 

(Oddly enough, I used to own that exact Miniscribe disk, which came in a Mac Classic II I used to have.)

 

- SupraDrive Atari Hard Disk system includes:
   - SupraDrive AT hard disk drive, one of
      - 10MB drive = Xebec 4000 / Xebec Owl (5.25" SASI)
      - 20MB drive = Miniscribe 8425S (3.5" SCSI) (can anyone verify this????)

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've got all these. I've also got the support disks.

 

Supra HD Interface (10MB) [81C25052].rom

 

Supra HD Interface (20MB - question) [DB2C9217].rom

 

KP HD Interface [2C5AF8AA].rom

 

KP HD Interface (My) [3D1D01EC].rom

 

The last two are K-Products, which is the same interface. The last one, I think, is a customized version (I'll have to check details in the thread I got it from).

 

Edited by MrFish
  • Like 6
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, AtariGeezer said:

There is also a 3rd party interface for the Supra Drive,  saw it on ebay 2 years ago for $25, but didn't pull the trigger. Doh!

It has a black case.  Have a pic of it on my XP PC, but need to replace the PS again first before I can post it...

Sounds interesting. I've only seen the K-Products version.

 

125190931_K-Products-HardDiskInterface.thumb.png.4130c3b27251aafc2b683fdc1bfcc171.png

 

 

Edited by MrFish
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Although I've never used one of these, I recall they had the hard drive parameters/geometry baked into the ROM and not user configurable, so every different hard drive would have needed a customized ROM/EPROM.

 

@MrFish's post with with actual ROM dumps seems to align with this with sizes in the file names. :) :thumbsup: I'm curious if the last two "KP" firmware's have anything substantially different code wise, or if they are indeed only changes in drive geometry and probably renaming to K-Products if that shows onscreen anywhere.

 

Would also be neat to check the marketing performance claim of 8-10,000 bytes per second. May be better with SpartaDOS since the ad mentions MyDOS. I don't seem to have a screenshot of RWTEST results from my MIO+real hard drive handy to compare...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, that's what I had read in the thread where the KP ROM's were posted -- about setting up parameters for each drive in the ROM's. They may well all be just that (same code/version with different drives specified). As far as the one with "20 MB" on it, I also put "question", as I was guessing/wondering if it were the case that it's for a 20 MB drive. The 10 MB drive ROM came with that info in the filename; so, pretty safe to assume it's right.

 

I didn't have time yet to examine it, but this source file will answer a lot of questions -- if you feel like checking it out. It gives specifics about the format used and together with it, we should be able to determine what each of these ROM's are.

 

MYROMTBL.LST.txt

 

Edited by MrFish
Link to comment
Share on other sites

38 minutes ago, Nezgar said:

I recall they had the hard drive parameters/geometry baked into the ROM and not user configurable, so every different hard drive would have needed a customized ROM/EPROM.

Same thing had to be done with early PCs when installing a larger HDD.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 4/17/2020 at 1:45 PM, MrFish said:

I've got all these. I've also got the support disks.

 

Supra HD Interface (10MB) [81C25052].rom 4 kB · 10 downloads

 

Supra HD Interface (20MB - question) [DB2C9217].rom 4 kB · 9 downloads

 

KP HD Interface [2C5AF8AA].rom 4 kB · 8 downloads

 

KP HD Interface (My) [3D1D01EC].rom 4 kB · 10 downloads

 

The last two are K-Products, which is the same interface. The last one, I think, is a customized version (I'll have to check details in the thread I got it from).

 

 

On 4/17/2020 at 10:24 PM, MrFish said:

Here's the starting point for examining the ROM's:

 

0210 ; The ROMWCB table starts at an
0220 ;  offset of $0700 from the
0230 ;  start of the EPROM.  The
0240 ;  LOGDEV table starts at $0740.

 

 

Compared all four ROM's; and the Supra 10MB and the two KP ROM's were all identical aside from the data which starts in the drive parameter tables, from the $0700 offset. There was also a difference at the end of the two KP files (same in both KP files) of 9 bytes, compared to the Supra 10 MB one, in a large area that was $FF 'd in all three files, otherwise (completely $FF 'd in the Supra 10 MB ROM).

 

Untitled.thumb.png.43a625ec3b2292fed372bfe578d3f1cb.png

 

But the other Supra ROM (marked as 20 MB ?) looked to be vastly different from the others. I'll have to see if I can track down where that one came from; and whether there's any other info about it.

 

Edited by MrFish
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nice pics and docs!

 

A little trivia... I had one of these Supra interfaces that I picked up at a Detroit Atari Show (1987?).  I bought it from ICD for next to nothing as they had gotten one to compare to their MIO.  It was crude, IMO, when compared to the MIO.  Bob Klas gave me the rom files after he got the rights to these from what was left of Supra.  He had plans to update the interface, but it never happened that I know of. I doubt that I still have the files.  I finally gave the interface away to another user here who hasn't posted for years.  Hope he's still kicking.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 hours ago, Larry said:

Nice pics and docs!

 

A little trivia... I had one of these Supra interfaces that I picked up at a Detroit Atari Show (1987?).  I bought it from ICD for next to nothing as they had gotten one to compare to their MIO.  It was crude, IMO, when compared to the MIO.  Bob Klas gave me the rom files after he got the rights to these from what was left of Supra.  He had plans to update the interface, but it never happened that I know of. I doubt that I still have the files.  I finally gave the interface away to another user here who hasn't posted for years.  Hope he's still kicking.

I have some Supra files, if anybody is looking for them.

 

Bob

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, bob1200xl said:

I have some Supra files, if anybody is looking for them.

 

Please do.

 

I went through what I have, and it looks like they're all K-Products supports files/disks. I'll post them soon, but I just wanted to finish sorting through them first; so I'm not just posting of pile of unorganized and/or redundant material.

 

If anybody has documentation for any of these kits, it would be nice to have copies of them. I haven't found anything yet, except the text files that come with the K-Products materials.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Alright, here's what I have for support disks so far.

 

The Supra images are 130 KB MyDOS from a double-sided disk and have a text file notice from Bob Klaas/K-Products. I can't get either of these to boot, but the files are accessible.

 

The K-Products disk is 720 KB MyDOS 4.50 and may contain everything that's on the two Supra images. They also have more files specific to later K-Products hardware. The disk is bootable.

 

Supra - MyDOS A.atr    Supra - MyDOS B.atr

 

K-Products - MyDOS 4.5.atr

 

 

 

 

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...