Looking for C-model of an AT disk.

[Michael Engel]

jdr_use at bluewin.ch wrote:
> I am looking for a generic C ( or C++) -model for an ATA disk drive. Nothing fancy, but should to read/write sectors 
> and have the ability to preload data.

Maybe the IDE disk emulator from qemu (http://www.qemu.org/) could be
useful. I did a bit of work adding a bus mouse emulation to qemu (in
order to get around the problems of NeXT/OPENSTEP's PS/2 mouse driver)
and found the qemu code quite easy to work with.

> I intend to integrate this into my ETH Lilith emulator, and then write new microcode such that the AT disk becomes 
> the main diskdrive for the system.

> If and when I get this running the solution will be ported to the real hardware, in order  that  the remaining lifetime 
> of finnicky Bull Mididisk can be used to image diskscartridges, if any should show up .

I don't know how complex the protocol for the original Bull drive is -
my approach here would be to build a FPGA-based solution to convert the
protocols. This is also what the POP11 PDP-11 emulator did - they built
a RK disk emulator for regular IDE drives (unfortunately using a
proprietary HDL): http://shimizu-lab.dt.u-tokai.ac.jp/pop11.html

-- Michael