[Coco] Q: Burke & Burke hard disk controller

[Chuck Youse]

On Tue, 2008-09-30 at 10:23 -0400, Steven Hirsch wrote:
> On Tue, 30 Sep 2008, Ciaran Anscomb wrote:
> 
> > Steven Hirsch wrote:
> >>
> >> Or, will a 16-bit IDE drive work while throwing away half its
> >> capacity (no access to the upper byte of data)?
> >
> > Yes, this definitely works.  I recently picked up an IDE/CompactFlash
> > interface off Ebay for the BBC Master, and it is an 8-bit interface.
> > 8 bits of each 16-bit transfer are simply discarded.
> >
> > Looking around a bit revealed that at least the most common ATA commands
> > are all contained within 8 bits.
> 
> Good, I thought I remembered hearing this from an Apple 2 owner.  There 
> are several IDE adapters for that platform, but almost no availability of 
> IDE hard drives with support for 8-bit data transfer.
> 
> It's "iffy" whether the B&B support software will recognize the 
> controller, but trying it won't hurt anything.

The HDISK, which will be available for sale within days (just need to
find the time to assemble them!) does precisely that- 8-bit IDE
transfers, truncating the upper 8 bits.  This means it'll work
half-capacity IDE disks and won't support ATAPI.

C.