Mass Storage solutions for 8800c?

[Jim Rauser]

I've started assembling the boards for my 8800c, and realized that I don't yet have a good mass-storage system.  I've played a little with the SD card drive on the Altair Duino, but I'd like something that will integrate smoothly into an S100 system and CP/M,  I have a couple of Mike Douglas's FDC+ (bare) boards but am unsure about the availability of drives and media.

I'd be interested in a standalone S100 board with a (micro-) SD drive on it, or in a medium-sized (32G) hard drive solution.  Does anyone know of/can anyone recommend  a good (semi-) standalone solution?

Thanks,

Jim Rauser

[Terry Fox]

John has designed a couple of S100 boards that use Compact Flash cards with an IDE interface.  I believe that he is in the middle of designing an SD card board right now, which he has mentioned on the group Zoom calls.

Terry

[Walt Perko]

Hi, 

Once I got my FDC+ working with the Serial Drive Server software on my PC I realized that the CF card system is too much work.  On my Altair-Duino Pro computers I was pulling the microSD card out every other day to do updates on stuff, changing the configuration etc.  I always wanted to have back-ups on my PC so I could recover if I got things screwed-up. 

Using the FDC+ Serial Drive Server software on my PC has eliminated 99% of the hassle with floppies and files and updates.  

I don't even use the CF card in my IMSAI-JAIR CBBS computer anymore ... it's just too easy to have .DSK floppies on my PC.  

.

[John Kennedy]

What do you use to manage the disk images on your PC? 

[Walt Perko]

Hi, 

I use the FDC+ Serial Drive Server.  Patrick Linstruth posted an updated version of Mike's in the https://groups.google.com/g/s100computers a year or so ago so you can load the extra large 8" 8MB floppies on A: and B: while using 360K floppies on C: and D: ... 

.

[Mike Douglas]

Walt,

Patrick’s work is a compatible serial disk server that runs under Linux instead of Windows. Both my Windows version and Patrick’s Linux version support the 8Mb disks in the same manner. You could have any combination of 8 mb and standard floppies that you want. In the case of CP/M, that combination is defined by the BIOS, not the disk server.

Mike D

[Walt Perko]

Hi, 

My Altair 8800c computer has a FDC+ board, but when I load the FDC+ Serial Drive Server on my Windows 10 PC I can only use 8MB on A: and B:  

When I use the FDC+ v1.41 and I load an 8MB .dsk on C: or D: this is the response I get:  

56K CP/M 2.2b v1.0
For Altair 8Mb Serial Drive

A0>LS D:

0 File(s), occupying 0K of 296K total capacity
64 directory entries and 296K bytes remain on D:
A0>

.

[Walt Perko]

Hi, 

What CP/M.dsk should I be BOOTing on to get four 8MB floppies?  

.

On Monday, September 23, 2024 at 4:31:47 PM UTC-7 Mike Douglas wrote:

[Patrick]

Walt, as Mike said and I have said before, this isn’t a limitation of the FDC+ serial server. The 8MB CP/M only works with 8MB disks on A and B, and 360K on C and D. There currently isn’t a CP/M that supports four 8MB disks.

The most recent FDC+ serial server releases for Windows and Linux were to support the lower baud rates for the serial version of CP/M.

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[Walt Perko]

Hi, 

I was wondering if something like David Hansel's VersaTerm couldn't be redesigned to be a FDC+ Serial Drive Server ... one connection to a PC when needed to upload new .DSKs to choose from to "mount" for CP/M, one serial connection to the Altair  like computers as the FDC+ Serial Drive Server providing two or more floppy disk drives to the Altair's.  

Perhaps use a thumb drive on the "USB keyboard" port for the .DSKs.  

.

On Monday, September 23, 2024 at 7:11:02 PM UTC-7 John Galt wrote:

can a Altair-Duino be setup to use MP/M setup with the 512mb drive?

[Tom Wilson]

I keep thinking about that version of CP/M that uses a serial port for the drive interface. Then you could use a microcontroller as a storage device, similar to the SD2EIC on a Commodore 64. I guess it could be called SD2FD or something similar.

[Walt Perko]

Hi, 

That's the thing, something that can take a USB thumb drive or a SD card ... I have about 100 SD cards and a few dozen microSD cards that could be used for FDC+ .DSK storage.  

.

[Tom Wilson]

... and if you use an ESP32 or Raspberry Pi Zero for the job, you could also tie in networking functions.  Then you could transfer disk images over to the Altair without the need to have a server PC on all the time. 

[Richard Deane]

What about Doug Miller's serial cpmnet client to a host pc server? I've not tried the serial one yet, but I like his cpmnet client within his kaypro emulator. He's on Durgadas.com

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/altair-duino/795d5a10-2726-475e-9147-f98df84e5cc9n%40googlegroups.com.

[Patrick]

Tom, I love that idea.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/altair-duino/d8315139-644f-4c8d-8157-e622ed925cafn%40googlegroups.com.