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Beer IDE 202

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BEER 202 IDE is a PATA/IDE−interface for MSX computers. It has been developed by Egor Voznesenski (SOLiD) in mid-1990s. Interface supports only one IDE or CF device. Designed to be simple, inexpensive board, BEER 202 is built from easy to obtain cheap components. Its firmware is based on MSXDOS DiskROM v1, so it's 100% DOS 1 compliant, and is compatible with CP/M Plus either. The device can also be used with MiSiX — MSX-DOS 1 derived OS, developed by Egor himself, UZIX1) and SymbOS. Neither MSXDOS 2 or memory mapper are required (nor are built in), so perfect for MSX 1. Card's schematics. There are different versions of BEER firmware, these are the most recent:

  1. BEER firmware v1.8 (binary, source)
  2. BEER firmware v1.9RC1 (binary)

PCB-design for BEER IDE, by Arnold Metselaar! Eagle format and postscript.

ATTENTION: This design contains an error, potentially very damaging. Pin 2 of the IDE header should be connected to GND (0V) and not to VCC (+5V). Using the design without this correction is very likely to cause a short circuit when a drive is connected to the IDE header.

Файл Описание
Original sourcesSource code of firmware 1.8 (uncorrected) and disk partitioning tool HPREP

The main differences between v1.8 and v1.9 firmware from the user's point are:

BEER ROM v1.8 accesses the disk using C/H/S mode only, whereas ROM v1.9RC1 supports LBA. Also, version 1.8 uses its own, non-standard partition table format (up to 5 partitions on a disk), differing from MS-DOS MBR, and has its own partitioning tools, designed to run on MSX-DOS and MS WINDOWS. Whereas ROM version 1.9RC1 is using DOS-standard partition table (primary partitions are only supported, up to 4), which makes it easier to transfer information between MSX and modern systems, and allows to partition the media by the means of a regular FDISK utility on many different platforms and Operating Systems.

Footnote 1
Installing UZIX on BEER IDE is especially quirky, e.g. UZIX regards HDD partitions as FDD's (/dev/fd*) etc… yet still works fine.

Relevant links

en/msx/beer_ide/beer_ide.txt · Last modified: 2024-03-20 21:01 by ATroubleshooter