Author: tIn (pD9E177D4.dip.t-dialin.net)
Date: 02-24-2002 13:16
>Oh, ok, I did understand you for most of it then.
Phew ;-)
>Am I correct there???
Yep, absolutely. That's exactly what I tried to point out and what PIO2PC/PIO2ST does for the XL/XE people. I understand that these devices are pretty poular in the XL scene, for obvious reasons. Why shouldn't we have that opportunity too? BTW: if such a device maps to the parallel port, it don't have to be a PC necessarily. The client software can also be written for TT/Falcon whatever...
>I also think it could be possible though, to have a small "driver" routine, that will, on the ST, select an MSA
>Image, and "Virtually" put that image into RAM, to act as A: and then do a soft reset!
>Its possible, and it will let you have your system to stay 100% Atari.
>I wonder about that?
That surely is possible, but, as I mentioned before: most of the software I'm targetting (Games/Demos) don't use TOS for disk access. In fact, some of them even don't use 512Byte-sized Sektors. They take full control of the ST, virtually "killing" TOS and it's drivers and the complete RAM and do _everything_ on it's own. As you can see, for this special software, such a disk emulation won't work at all. And if I'm hooking my Falcon to the ST, I'd stay 100% Atari too ;-)
>The thing is, that you are ( it seems to me ) trying to go a hell of a complex way around just trying to avoid
>using something that you already have!
It might be complex, in fact I don't know exactly how complex it would be to build such an interface as I never was into hardware that deep. That's why I'm asking. Maybe someone says: "I'm a hardware guru and I say that this is absolutely not possible", or "Well it's possible, but it will cost $xx". I hope for the latter.
I just try to avoid making hundreds of disk I already have as disk images. Most of my old ones are either gone or broken... And this way my ST will stay on my desk even longer as I could use it _a lot_ easier.
>Sort of like having a car, with free insurance / fuel etc, but still wanting to get the bus?
Actually it's more like having a car, with free insurance / fuel, but the fuel is miles away in a big gas tank and I have to walk home every single gallon with a bucket that leaks. I simply ask for a pipeline/gas station ;-)
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