MFMulation? (Solid-state replacements for MFM drives)

[Allison]

>
>Subject: MFMulation? (Solid-state replacements for MFM drives)
>   From: M H Stein <dm561 at torfree.net>
>   Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 03:23:54 -0300
>     To: "'cctalk at classiccmp.org'" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>
>Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 23:05:49 +0100 (BST)
>From: Entity <entity at nenevr.demon.co.uk>
>Subject: MFMulation? (Solid-state replacements for MFM drives)
>
><snip>
>>I've got a Northstar Horizon that I mentioned on here many, many years
>>ago and I've just started looking at it again; once I've got it up and
>>running it'd be nice to add some sort of permanent storage, but without
>>jettisoning one of the floppy drives. The SuperIO board is one option,
>>but I'd like to keep it as stock-Northstar as I can.
><snip>
>-------------
>If you mean Howard Harte's SuperIO board, apparently he's no longer 
>making or supporting it; too bad.
>
>mike

Thats also a factor.  One I'd point out is the only reason for stock 
NS* Horizon is NSDos (and related NS* software) as the dos is locked 
to the disk controller hardware. Once you use another disk interface
(ANY) NSDos is a non player and CP/M or one of the similar OSs becomes
the choice as you can create your own BIOS to match whatever IO 
hardware you have.

An NS* horizon as a S100 crate is a good system and with a higher density 
FDC or HDC added and CP/M it has a place as a retro system or as an 
example of hobbiest systems of the time.  It was not uncommon to 
upgrade a NS* with denser disks or even add a hard disk of some form.

For the extreme user, since NSDos is on the net in assembly form it's 
possible to rewrite it to use a differnt disk or disk equivilent. I've 
played with that so it can be done.


Allison