Filestore Hard drive

In another thread Rick Murray wrote:

I still keep hoping that somebody somewhere will find a copy of the FileStore E01S source code (even though it’s now over a decade late and I’ve probably nothing much that can talk Econet any more); it would be nice to kill the dependency on two specific models of harddisc that have been formatted in a very specific way.

Does anyone have a note of which specific models of harddisc Filestore used?
We have a Filestore drive case with missing drive and a small selection of 40MB SCSI drives.

Then there will be the small problem of formatting the drive…

and a small selection of 40MB SCSI drives.

Any of them Rodime?

Then there will be the small problem of formatting the drive…

Have they been used before? There’s a little part of the drive’s controller that is a page of write-once memory. The formatter places something here that the FileStore looks for in order to recognise the drive.
I had an Apple 20MB SCSI drive plus a Rodime Ro6xxx (the 40MB drive). Never ever managed to get it ‘seen’ by the FileStore.
Hmmm…

Maybe also byte 49 of the CMOS RAM, though it didn’t seem to work for me…?
https://www.heyrick.co.uk/econet/fs/cmos.html

See also the service manual, page 107.
http://stardot.org.uk/mirrors/www.bbcdocs.com/filebase/econet/FilestoreServiceManualv2.pdf

The ever reliable Chris’s Acorns lists the E40S drive as a 43MB Rodime RO3057S.

BeebMaster lists the E20 drive as a Rodime RO652.

I recall Rodime.

I once unplugged the drives from an E01S and put them into an A5000 SCSI card. Worked nicely! Of course, when I plugged them back into the FileStore it couldn’t speak to them. I had to ask Acorn nicely for a formatting utility, which I think was on a FileStore floppy.

A bit more digging reveals this thread on Stardot where BeebMaster has managed to emulate Filestore hard drives using SCSI2SD (including formatting them).

Might be worth getting in touch with him .

I had to ask Acorn nicely for a formatting utility, which I think was on a FileStore floppy.

FServInit (and FServEdit to edit the disc structure in a very complicated manner ;-) ).

Copies are here, along with FileStore test software: http://www.irrelevant.com/bbc/FSdtdADF.zip

If you can’t handle, or don’t want, disc images, the files are here: http://www.irrelevant.com/bbc/FSdtd.zip

Edit: OMG! This one comes with SOURCE CODE! That would have been so useful two decades ago when I was doing stuff with Econet and wading through the crunched programs.

Sorry to hijack this thread but I’ve been trying to make contact with the Richard Walker who ported Populous to RISC OS as I had a couple of questions about a potential related project that I wanted to ask.

I’m wondering if the Richard Walker who replied on this thread 2 days ago is the same person? I don’t think there’s a way to send PMs on here but if you see this Richard I’d appreciate it if you made contact through my form at http://davidsharp.com/contact. I promise not to pester you!

who ported Populous

Was that the one where you had all these little dudes chasing a giant Ankh and occasionally beating the crap out of each other?

That’s the one! Fantastic game for it’s time.

https://forums.jaspp.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=331

Nope, that’s not me. I have been asked a few times over the years!

Nope, that’s not me. I have been asked a few times over the years!

Are you the Walker part of Armstrong Walker (something to do with HCCS)?

Thanks for confirming, you can probably ignore the private message I sent you on JASSP as well then :)

@Rick, no I am not that one, either. Mind you, I am at least in the right part of the world (Teesside). I did once pop to the HCCS place in Gateshead to get my model B fixed. Very strange place, but seemed like a sweetie shop to me (Beebs, Arcs and various bits of hardware everywhere).

and various bits of hardware everywhere

Oh yes. ;-)

When I used to look for repair shops, I had a very simple rule. If the place looked like a municipal tip with a dog eared Maplin catalogue on top of a bundle of assorted cables on top of an oscilloscope, and pretty much nothing had a lid on it, that place would get my business. Especially if they were playing a Belinda Carlisle tape and fed the audio into the ’scope just because.

A place with sterile white benches, everything lined up tidily, and likely no visible test equipment more complicated than a multimeter? I’d walk on by. One did not ask the staff of PC World for advice with hardware¹, likewise you don’t ask for technical support from a place that would probably struggle to look inside and identify which chip is the processor…

¹ PC World in Guildford (or was it Working? I forget): after patiently explaining that I was looking for a harddisc of around half a gigabyte for my ACORN, he told me that my AMIGA had a non standard interface and I would need a SCSI harddisc. Wrong on both counts as Amiga is not Acorn, and anyway the Amiga A600 and A1200 (probably others too, but an Amiga fanboy I knew had those models) has onboard IDE and space for a 2.5" drive (using that weird 44 pin IDE+power connector found in older laptops). You can probably guess from the things mentioned that this was circa 1999 or so. I doubt they have improved.