msx harddrive?

Expert (105)

02-08-2019, 03:07

i have been thinking on this and know there are a few but i wonder how hard is it to get the software for one up and running? i know there have been some cpm work but nothing past testing software but msxdos was a version of msdos made by Microsoft so it should be able to be done ? what do you think? i know some of the s100 system run dos 4.01 but they are running 286/386 cpus but they also run cpm, cpm-86 etc as well.. im thinking of a z80 daughter board that the cpu plugs into with a cf card for hdd only need to be 512mb as cpm 2.2 only sees 8mb drives and it will work with the msxdos with 8mb drives as well. anyone interested in helping on this quest?

thanks

By Manuel

Ascended (19228)

02-08-2019, 09:09

The software is the same as for SD cards and such: MSX-DOS 2 or Nextor. Hard drives have been used on MSX as of 1989 or so. Modern mass storage is much more comfortable to use!

By konamiman

Paragon (1187)

02-08-2019, 10:28

Manuel wrote:

Hard drives have been used on MSX as of 1989 or so. Modern mass storage is much more comfortable to use!

Indeed. That, combined with the explosion of Internet, and the appearance of modern cross-development tools and small and affordable components for hardware upgrades, is why I always say that technological advancement first killed MSX but later resurrected it

By meits

Scribe (6530)

02-08-2019, 12:07

konamiman wrote:

I always say that technological advancement first killed MSX but later resurrected it

That's a nice point of view

By LS120

Expert (105)

02-08-2019, 12:20

i agree

By mohai

Paladin (995)

02-08-2019, 19:18

MSX-DOS can handle up to 32 MB partitions. This is reason why FAT16 (for MSX-DOS2) and Nextor were done.
MSX can handle up to 8 logical drives so, using big drives partitioned as small 32 MB drives is not practical.
MSX-DOS 1 does not handle sub-directories (but is capable to identify them), this is another annoying feature.
MSX-DOS 2 can handle sub-directories and more features, but it needs (at least) 128KB of mapped RAM, so MSX 1 was not in the list for MSX-DOS 2 (there are some modern mappers suitable for MSX-1 too, it is not a big issue now).

I remember a patched MSX-DOS 1 that was able to work with directories. The way it worked was a bit annoying, as the directory allocation field in the disk was re-written everytime you changed current directory.
I wonder if somebody though of a patch for MSX-DOS 1 to properly handle sub-directories without the needing of extra mapped RAM.

By LS120

Expert (105)

04-08-2019, 04:01

that is a good question.. and thanks for the info

was that because the firmware in msx1 rom's was not included? what about a shim with modded rom and cf card (internal) ?

By mohai

Paladin (995)

05-08-2019, 09:37

Yes. Mapper initalize is not supported by MSX1 rom.
Mapper is a feature created when MSX-2 appeared.
There are some modern mappers that auto-initialize, so they are MSX-1 compatible, so MSX-DOS 2 and other software can run on it.
Maybe a patched MSX-DOS 1 rom to support sub-directories or a patched MSX1 rom to support mapper can do the job...