Most used/relevant mass storage devices for the MSX? (at present)

Champion (264)

08-05-2014, 17:08

BEER202 is the cheapest and easyest to build IDE interface.
In France there are at least 20 built by me.
I also built one in a single EPM240 CPLD.

With MSXDOS2 support, it will be a really good product.
I can provide one if someone want to mod ROM for MSXDOS2 support.

By Prodatron

Paragon (1808)

08-05-2014, 17:58

Very interesting stuff! Hope I can get a PadialSD, just sent him an eMail.

By sd_snatcher

Prophet (3499)

09-05-2014, 00:37

I have a LPE-MMC-V8BKP and it's a fantastic device. Namely:

1) It's lightning fast. And it's very quick to compute the free space on FAT16 partitions.

2) Supports FAT16 natively. I guess it was the 2nd device to support that (OCM was the 1st).

3) Very easy to use. All the tools were coded by Kralizek and the SETUP tool in built-in the ROM. It's not only beautifully designed, but also very easy to format a card and get it running

4) It supports disk emulation without any inconveniences:

4a) Read/write support for all disks. To write protect a disk, just use the /W parameter.
4b) No special disk naming is required, no concatenation required, no defragmentation required. Just use your normal DSK images

5) Supports card hot-swapping

Kudos for Ramones (of Kralizek) for developing such impressive set of tools.

Note: The previous LPE-MMC-V6BKP had some hardware compatibility issues with many MSX models, but those were fixed in the V8 model.

By Prodatron

Paragon (1808)

09-05-2014, 00:48

@sd_snatcher: I am so glad, that Leonardo is still producing the PadialSD/MMC, looking forward to receive mine!
Regarding...
- card hot-swapping: that's a fantastic feature. I missed it a lot for the Sunrise (MegaSD does it, too, which is really cool)
- lighting fast: I wonder if it's as fast as Sunrise or MegaSD? Is pure 512 x LDI allowed for transfering one sector?
- the great thing is, that it works fine on 7MHz as I heard.

By edoz

Prophet (2437)

09-05-2014, 08:44

Yes! I also ordered one

By Guillian

Prophet (3502)

09-05-2014, 09:50

sd_snatcher wrote:

1) It's lightning fast.

Prodatron asked it... MegaFlashROM SCC+ SD is faster.
AFAIK, LPE-MMC needs to do something like this for reading a byte:

	ld	a,(SD_DATA)
	ld	(hl),a
	inc	hl
	nop
	nop
	nop

MegaFlashROM SCC+ SD works with just a LDI.

sd_snatcher wrote:

And it's very quick to compute the free space on FAT16 partitions.

Nextor 2.0.3 computes free disk space even faster

sd_snatcher wrote:

2) Supports FAT16 natively. I guess it was the 2nd device to support that (OCM was the 1st).

Actually it aplies OKEI's FAT16 patch 'on the fly'. So probably it will have problems with RAMDISK.
Nextor has FAT16 natively implemented in the DOS2 kernel.

sd_snatcher wrote:

5) Supports card hot-swapping

But it does not update DOS2 buffers. So you could have problems when inserting a different card or the same with its content modified.

It could be nice a software upgrade to support both SD card slots (only one is operative right now) and support for SDHC cards (very common these days). Also, 4GB partitions would be nice.

By konamiman

Paragon (1172)

09-05-2014, 10:11

Guillian wrote:

Nextor 2.0.3 computes free disk space even faster

At least include a spoiler alert first, man!

By NYYRIKKI

Enlighted (5917)

09-05-2014, 10:19

maxis wrote:

NYYRIKKI wrote:

Novatec ATA interfaces were relatively popular among DIY people.

Novatec produced 35 "SuperATA" controllers. However, that was the only run back then in 1997. It was never respined ever since.

However, Egor's BEER202 was reincarnated quite a lot of times by the hobbyists from 1995. IMHO, this is the simplest and the most popular/supported controller for MSX1/MSX2 among the DIYers around the globe.

Sorry, my bad... I was mixing these two... I just remembered that the design was made by Egor. :)

By Grauw

Ascended (10561)