Vortex Winchester Drive
A HardDiscDrive (HDD) solution for the CPC.
Actually the first for the CPC.
Produced by the German company Vortex
The Harddisc was build about 1986. It have the same cases like the F1-S and the F1-D. A big Power Supply which have about 1,5 Kilograms gives the power to the Harddrive. The Harddrive was shipped with the Powersupply The Harddrive itself, a built in 5,25" DD Diskdrive with 720KB and a Controller which was used for being the MFM Controller with two ports for two MFM Harddiscs, two DD Floppys and a ROM board which give place for 2 Roms, which held the VDOS 2.0
The Contoller get the Power from the Harddisc.
You can connect up to two 60MB MFM Drives which are supported by the VDOS 2.0.
But the normal setup was with a 20 MB MFM Drive.
A Software Package consists of a few helpful tools:
- LowLevel Format
- Partition tools
- Format partitions
- Patch for CPM 2.2 and 3.0 (Plus) to support the Drive
- File/Disccopy Tools
- Diskformat
- Hexeditor
- and a few more...
Technical
CPCAI magazine claims the device has a WD1010 Winchester controller inside. The ROM seems to imply this too although the WD1010's A2, A1,A0 are not mapped to A2,A1,A0 on CPC.
The WD1010 has different commands and communication method compared to the Dobbertin (which appears to use SASI) and modern IDE (which uses ATA).
Therefore the software is *not* compatible with the Dobbertin or modern IDE drives.
Ports seem to be:
fbfa = -----011-----010 a2=1, a1=1,a0=0 sdh
fbfb = -----011-----011 a2=1, a1=1,a0=1
f9f8 = -----001-----000 a2=0, a1=0,a0=0
f9f9 = -----001-----001 a2=1, a1=1,a0=0 ???
f9fa = -----001-----010 a2=0, a1=1,a0=0
f9fb = -----001-----011 a2=0, a1=1,a0=1
faf8 = -----010-----000 a2=1, a1=0,a0=0 cylinder low
faf8 = -----010-----000 a2=1, a1=0,a0=0 cylinder low
------2-------10
f8f9 = write precomp?
FBFA - drive select (write) sdh??? FBFB - wd1010 write command (write)/wd1010 read status register (read) F9F8 - WD1010 data register (read/write) F9F9 = wd1010 sdh register (write) (seems more like sdh) F9FA = wd1010 sector count register (write) F9FB = wd1010 sector number register (write) FAF8 = wd1010 cylinder low register (write) FAF9 = wd1010 cylinder high register (write)
FAF8 = cylinder low? 1111101011111000 FAF9 = cylinder high? 1111101011111001 FAFA = ?
WD1010 appears to be mapped to CPC's A0.
