Speculator

[MikeDHalliday]

Another Einstein device I've designed is a micro SD card interface that connects to the user port. No PCBs ever made but hardware-wise it's trivial.

Be interesting to know if the sd card could be used in conjunction with speculator to load spectrum images?

Be much quicker than tape, that's for sure

[Lardo Boffin]

The Silicon Disc sounds very interesting!

How does the speed compare to the floppy drives in real world usage?

[Tony Brewer]

The Silicon Disc sounds very interesting!

How does the speed compare to the floppy drives in real world usage?

Silicon Disc is very fast. Data transfer rate is 1.5Mbps, compared to 250Kbps for 3" floppy. That's six times quicker and overheads much lower as no head to move and no waiting for the right sector to spin round.

[Tony Brewer]

Very impressed to see that you've implemented drive mapping so the Silicon Disc can be configured as Drive 0.

"Provision has been made in the silicon disc ROM for logical (DOS)
disc drive to physical (MOS) disc drive mapping. The routine that
accomplishes this is the patched DOS drive select routine ZSLDSC.
This routine uses a special silicon disc variable at address
FDFFH to determine which physical drive corresponds to which
logical drive. This variable is interpreted in the following way
<snip>

Thanks to everyone for the kind welcome here. Can I ask where you found the info you quoted? Web searches for Tatung Einstein Silicon Disc produce almost nothing, so it's a good job I know a bit about it!

[Lardo Boffin]

The Silicon Disc sounds very interesting!

How does the speed compare to the floppy drives in real world usage?

Silicon Disc is very fast. Data transfer rate is 1.5Mbps, compared to 250Kbps for 3" floppy. That's six times quicker and overheads much lower as no head to move and no waiting for the right sector to spin round.

Very interested in one of those then!

I have an einSDein which is really fast but doesn’t work well when doing stuff like compiling a C program.

Compiling from disc / gotek is quite slow due to disc access.

[Tony Brewer]

Another Einstein device I've designed is a micro SD card interface that connects to the user port. No PCBs ever made but hardware-wise it's trivial.

Be interesting to know if the sd card could be used in conjunction with speculator to load spectrum images?

Be much quicker than tape, that's for sure

Yes, good idea. Also quicker than loading via RS232.

BTW, Einstein power supply can cope with Speculator and Silicon Disc connected at same time. A 60-way cable I made had pipe connector in the middle and SD was inside the case, upside down above the motherboard and supported by a bracket.

I've been thinking about how to increase the µSD card speed. If I could use PIO modes 0 and 1 instead of 3, then data rate could increase from ~12KBps to ~32KBps, the maximum possible for serial data using 4MHz Z80.

[retrogamer]

Very impressed to see that you've implemented drive mapping so the Silicon Disc can be configured as Drive 0.

"Provision has been made in the silicon disc ROM for logical (DOS)
disc drive to physical (MOS) disc drive mapping. The routine that
accomplishes this is the patched DOS drive select routine ZSLDSC.
This routine uses a special silicon disc variable at address
FDFFH to determine which physical drive corresponds to which
logical drive. This variable is interpreted in the following way
<snip>

Thanks to everyone for the kind welcome here. Can I ask where you found the info you quoted? Web searches for Tatung Einstein Silicon Disc produce almost nothing, so it's a good job I know a bit about it!

Yes, I had to search hard for any information. Until this discussion, I was not even aware that anyone had developed a Silicon Disc for the Einstein.

The quote is taken from a document posted in the Silicon Disc folder in the Files section of the Tatung Einstein Computer Group. Access requires subscription and membership of the Tatung Einstein Groups.io account.

It would probably be useful to open a new Silicon Disc topic here in due course so relevant information associated with it is more generally available. Still can’t quite believe the Silicon Disc rom allows reassignment of drive numbers without a hardware modification. Sounds like magic to me

[Tony Brewer]

Thanks to everyone for the kind welcome here. Can I ask where you found the info you quoted? Web searches for Tatung Einstein Silicon Disc produce almost nothing, so it's a good job I know a bit about it!

Yes, I had to search hard for any information. Until this discussion, I was not even aware that anyone had developed a Silicon Disc for the Einstein.

The quote is taken from a document posted in the Silicon Disc folder in the Files section of the Tatung Einstein Computer Group. Access requires subscription and membership of the Tatung Einstein Groups.io account.

It would probably be useful to open a new Silicon Disc topic here in due course so relevant information associated with it is more generally available. Still can’t quite believe the Silicon Disc rom allows reassignment of drive numbers without a hardware modification. Sounds like magic to me

Thanks for the info. I've applied to join that Einstein group and I'm waiting for approval. Reassigning drive numbers is quite easy as I intercept all MCALs. Most time-consuming part was finding safe place in RAM for Silicon Disc variables compatible with MOS and all DOS versions.

Tatung Einstein Speculator board photo

ESP.jpg (188.81 KiB) Viewed 2906 times

Silicon Disc board photo moved to new topic:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=124

[Lardo Boffin]

Both look lovely!

Will they be self build or will there be a built option? (Hoping for the latter. )

[Tony Brewer]

Both look lovely!

Will they be self build or will there be a built option? (Hoping for the latter. )

They will be already assembled, when I have the time.