CPC-IDE
The CPC-IDE was the first fully working IDE interface for the CPC. Later on it got expanded to the SYMBiFACE II.
History
In Autumn 2004 the CPC-IDE was developed by Dr.Zed with support from Octoate (financial), Tolkin (financial), TFM (finding a free port address) and later Prodatron (software support in SymbOS). It was the first released hardware solution ever that allowed connection of IDE harddrives and CF cards to the CPC. Technically the CPC-IDE interface was an independant development, though the idea of splitting 16bit words into two 8bit bytes for the data transfer came from the GIDE IDE interface by Tilmann Reh.
It was fully working, but still in a prototype state, so only 10 pieces have been produced.
During the production of the CPC-IDE Prodatron joined the team and created IDE-support in SymbOS for FAT16 and FAT32 hard discs by Xmas 2004.
After getting it working successfully, Dr.Zed and Prodatron made plans for a second version, which includes a lot of more extensions. So the SYMBiFACE II is not now merely an IDE interface. It merges the CPC with current PC technology.
Technical
The CPC-IDE interface uses port &FD06-&FD0F by default, but you can select the upper 8 bits with the jumpers on the board. The I/O Ports are compatible with the SYMBiFACE II:IDE registers.
Pictures
- Images of the CPC-IDE prototype
