Acorn Econet Fileserver

[Tony Duell]

> > The E20 hard disk unit contains the standard Host Adapter card linked
> to
> > a 20NByte SCSI hard disk. That was the normal thing to link to the 34
> pin
> > connector on the E01. It sohuld be relatively easy to put one of
> those
> > together... Is there any restriction on the hard disk size? What
> would
> > happen if I linked up a unit of several hundred Mbyte capacity? Would
> it
> > just not work, would it only see it as a 20Mhyte unit, or would it
> see
> > the whole thing?
> 
> There will be some limit, but I'm not sure what it is.  More than 20MB,
> for sure.  Might be 500MB, maybe less.  I know that stacking filestores
> use the same code, and I know that although the largest ones sold and
> supported by Acorn were 60MB, they had bigger in-house.

Julese Richardson seems to think there'll be a problem with the fact that 
the Filestore will want a deive that suports 256 byte sectors.

> Yes, two 3.5" floppies.  And I just happen to have a set :-)  One is
> for use with a Master 128 called "M128-FSUTILS" and the other is for
> use with a Compact and labelled "COMPACT-FSUTILS".

What's the difference? 

I don't have a Compact, so I probably don't need the second disk. Can I 
assume these are the hard disk formatter, etc, programs and not the 
diagnostic stuff?

> 
> They're 640K, like ADFS L format, but the actual disk directory etc is
> somewhat different, and called "Filestore Format".  So I can copy them
> for you if you send me a couple of 3.5" DD floppies.  I've never tried

Will do, but it won't be soon (I've got a lot to do before I need the 
utility disk).

> making a teledisk image; that *might* work.  They're double-density,
> 256 bytes/sector, 16 sectors/track.

Should be possible, but not a lot of use to me as I don;t haev Teledisk 
(and don't intend to try to write soemthing to handle its images). I 
might have a go at writing programs to handle Imagedisk stuff though.

> Ditto!  The test box pre-dates the Master series, though.  It was
> around when Beebs were.

It's a pitty the software seems to be long-lost....

> > The chap who sold this to me included a couple of such Sony
> > drives, alas missing the front panels and eject buttons. I now have
> to
> > try to find those. The missing mounting hardware is less of a
> problem,
> > as are the missing cables.
> 
> Those probably came from a Master Compact or an Archimedes -- they used
> the drives without the bezels.

Indeed. 

-tony