The Cloud-9 SuperIDE Interface

[zephyr]

I would like to ask a few questions before I buy one of Cloud-9's SuperIDE devices:

Say you had 1000 + virtual floppy disks. How easy would it be to transfer them to the CompactFlash card?

Is it just a matter of creating a directory structure on the CF and copying the .dsk files across from your PC's hard drive?

[KenH]

Steve,
A single SuperIDE compact flash can store 256 floppy disks, in addition to an OS9 hard disk partition.
The 256 floppy disks limit is set by HDB-DOS (although there are some hacks that will allow more disks through bank switching).
Its quite easy to transfer DSK images to the CF card - just use the SIDEWalk utility
https://sites.google.com/site/drivewire4/sidewalk

Also check out Sidekick, a file browser for SuperIDE
https://sites.google.com/site/tandycocoloco/sidekick
Ken

[zephyr]

Why is the special software (SIDEWalk) needed to copy the virtual .dsk files from your PC's hard drive to the SuperIDE CF card. Are the CF cards not formatted with the FAT16 or FAT32 file system?

[linville]

No, they are accessed at the sector level. You don't copy a disk image to a filesystem on the CF card. The individual sectors of a disk image are mapped to specific sectors on the CF card.

[zephyr]

So each virtual floppy disk is like a partition on the CF card, and the SIDEWalk utility allows you to copy the contents of any .DSK file to one of these partitions?

Say you had a brand new 4GB CF card formatted in by the manufacturer:

(1) How do you set up the individual partitions across the entire 4GB of the new card from your MS-Windows PC?

(2) Can you create a new virtual floppy disk (partition) on the CF card from HDB-DOS and format it with DSKINI?

(3) Can you then read and write to the virtual floppy disk (partition) as you would if it were a real floppy disk?

(4) Ken mentioned "bank switching" above. How do you select which "bank" of 256 virtual disks you want from HDB-DOS?

[robcfg]

That looks a lot like a Floppy Emulator I bought some time ago, which seems to be hardcoded for standard PC formats, and comes with a program that will format an SD card into a lot of partitions of a particular disk size.

[linville]

So each virtual floppy disk is like a partition on the CF card, and the SIDEWalk utility allows you to copy the contents of any .DSK file to one of these partitions?

That is a pretty good analogy, yes.

Bear in mind that I haven't really used SIDEWalk, and wasn't even really aware of it before this thread...

Say you had a brand new 4GB CF card formatted in by the manufacturer:

(1) How do you set up the individual partitions across the entire 4GB of the new card from your MS-Windows PC?

AIUI, that is exactly what SIDEWalk does.

(2) Can you create a new virtual floppy disk (partition) on the CF card from HDB-DOS and format it with DSKINI?

The partitioning scheme is a bit inflexible. Basically, it allows you to allocate some portion at the beginning of the CF card for use by OS-9. The address of the last sector of that OS-9 partition is then stored as part of the HDB-DOS ROM code (or poked into an HDB-DOS image loaded to RAM).

The remainder of the CF card beyond that is divided into as many as 256 160K "floppy drive" images, one after the other. Each of these is accessed by number in HDB-DOS. So, "DSKINI 7" will format the 8th image after the OS-9 partition.

(3) Can you then read and write to the virtual floppy disk (partition) as you would if it were a real floppy disk?

Yes, presuming you use HDB-DOS commands or the DSKCON routine. Software that attempts to drive the FDC hardware directly will fail, of course.

(4) Ken mentioned "bank switching" above. How do you select which "bank" of 256 virtual disks you want from HDB-DOS?

Remember above where I mentioned POKEing the address of the last sector in the OS-9 partition into the HDB-DOS image? Well, if you have enough space on the CF card after the OS-9 partition for more than 256 floppy images then you can POKE in a new value for that sector address that points beyond the 256th image. This gives you another 256 images to access, and if that isn't enough then you can do it again and again until you run out of space. I think that HDB-DOS uses 24-bit sector addresses, so that gets you to 8GB or so max for the CF card.

[zephyr]

Thank you John, Ken, for taking the time to answer my questions. I will order a SuperIDE ASAP. Any future tips for getting the best out of the SuperIDE will be welcome!

[KenH]

The easiest way to get started is with retrocanada's SuperIDE preloaded CF image.
http://www.4shared.com/zip/y9ID8Pd_/side-megapak_2.html
It is a CF image with a collection of most of the CoCo software available in the various archives online.

You can also use my modified version of this this image which was adapted to dual boot OS9 on a Dragon or CoCo3. See my post here:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=779&start=10#p4082

[zephyr]

Thanks for that, Ken, but it won't let me download. It asks for a username and password which I don't have, and don't want to join. I (and I'm pretty sure everyone else here) would much prefer to download from a hosting site like SendSpace (300MB file size limit for free uploads/downloads) that doesn't require the input of a username and password to upload or download files.

Regards,
Steve