This file summarizes some of the most popular questions I have been asked concerning IDEfile. Besides that, some information is collected here that did not fit into the main article.

Parts, shipping and availability

• "Do you sell kits or complete systems?"
  No, I don't. If you need a ready-to-run drive for your Lisa, go to Vintage Micros Inc. or Sun Remarketing. These people run a professional business, I do not. IDEfile is indended as a hobby project only.
  
  Since November 2005, the X/Profile is available from Sigma Seven Systems Ltd (the people who designed the XLerator board). It is not cheap, but it comes completely assembled and tested and is therefore a good alternative for people who don't know which side of the soldering iron should be touched ;-)
  
  
• "I live on the moon. Can I buy all the required parts in my local electronic store?"
  IDEfile does not use any uncommon parts, therefore everything should be available - at least per mail order. If you live in or close to Germany, the de.sci.electronics FAQ contains a list of potential suppliers.
  
  The only exception are the GALs. You can by them at your favourite electronic store, but, as I did not disclose the JEDEC files, you'll have to contact me to get them burned. This is a precaution that allows me to keep track of the units built and that makes it more difficult for people who did not understand the copyright section to start a mass production and charge collector's prices at eBay.
  
  
• "I don't own a GAL and/or EPROM burner. Can I get programmed chips from you?"
  If you send me your chips, you'll get them programmed for free and pay only the shipping costs back to you. If I have to provide the chips, I will charge you the (somewhat rounded) cost price. Today (March 2010) this is EUR 10,- plus shipping.
  
  
• "I don't want to etch my own PCB. Can I get one from you?"
  First, I can put you on my list. From time to time I do a batch order at a PCB pool manufacturer. Today (March 2010), in quantities of 5 - 10 an empty PCB with stop mask and silkscreen printing costs EUR 45,- (plus shipping). This is the (rounded) cost price. To achieve this quantity, I have to collect 5 - 10 PCB orders, therefore it may take some time until you get your board.
  
  
• "How can I pay for my chips & PCB?"
  Money transfer to my bank account, in Germany COD (Nachnahme), outside Germany PayPal. International Money Orders do not work any more, Deutsche Post AG cancelled the support a few years ago.
  
  Some notes to Paypal: At Paypal I have only a personal account, therefore I cannot receive payments funded by credit cards. You have to send the money from a deposit on your PayPal account or from your bank account. These are their rules, not mine. Besides that, for quite a while now Paypal charges a fee for receiving payments. For an amount of EUR 65,-, this increases the costs by EUR 2,60.
  
  To get an impression of the shipping costs, look at the DHL home page. Usually a PCB and a few ICs can be shipped in a big letter (Maxibrief), but international buyers may prefer a parcel (Postpaket) with insurance. Please note that international shipping may take its time. Letters are faster than parcels.

Technical questions

• "Can I get the JEDEC files, firmware source code, PCB source file?"
  No, you cannot. IDEfile is not public domain, the copyright is hold by me.
  
  
• "Does my HAL2001 IDE drive work with your system?"
  If it is ATA-compliant, your chances are good. Usually a drive is ATA-compliant when it can be combined with any other hard disk or CD-ROM drive. Some very old drives do their own Primary/Secondary ("Master/Slave") handling and may cause problems with IDEfile. These drives will cause problems with any new PC mainboard, too.
  
  If your drive is not recognized by the firmware, check its jumper settings. The drive must be configured as a single (Primary or "Master") drive, not as a Secondary or "Slave". If this is not the cause, hold the reset button after power-on until the drive has come up to speed. A few older drives do not like being accessed during their selftest procedure.
  
  
• "Does my CF card / MO drive / Syquest, Bernoulli, Iomega work with your system?"
  I did not try it. If you get it running, please let me know. Generally, anything that behaves like an ATA-compliant hard disk should work with IDEfile. Of course you can use a 2,5" (notebook) drive -- this just needs an adapter for the different connector.
  
  CF cards have a "True-IDE" mode which is ATA-compliant. Therefore you can use them with IDEfile (and any other computer that regularly uses IDE drives) -- and they are completely silent! You'll need a CF-to-IDE - adapter , which is mainly a mechanical thing. I got mine from ebay for less than EUR 10,-, but this was almost too cheap: Obviously the Chinese supplier had some trouble with lead-free soldering, which made some rework necessary.
  
  Remember that LisaOS updates some blocks (e.g. the MDDF at $002E) very often. Flash cards are not designed for frequent overwrite accesses, so the service life of the card strongly depends on the wear levelling scheme used by the manufacturer.
  
  
• "Which RAM type can I use?"
  I have tested about 30 different RAM types: 6116, 6264 and 62256 from different brands with access times between 25ns (486 cache) and 200ns. All these types worked without any trouble. However, one user reported that the HMC "HM6264LP-70 0349A C3C28" and ??? "UT6364CPC-70LL 2UTZ49118.1D22G 0403" types did not run properly - they passed the RAM test but crashed the system during HD accesses. If you encounter a similar problem, try a different RAM type or manufacturer. And please let me know the bad type.
  
  IDEfile requires only 2kB RAM, therefore a 6116 is completely sufficient. The DMA counter has 12bit, so up to 4kB are supported.
  
  
• "Which CPU type can I use?"
  Any 8031 compatible CPU with regular memory timing. 8031 is the ROMless version of the i8051, the most popular member of Intel's MCS-51 family. 8032/8052 have twice as much memory, 8751 is the EPROM/OTP version, 89 means Flash memory. A "C" in the middle indicates power-saving CMOS technology. For example, use the Atmel AT89C51-24PI which is rated up to 24MHz. Or rip one from your old VCR's front panel. Recycling is the cheapest way of getting electronic components - and good for the environment, too.
  
  High-Speed processors like the Dallas DS89C420 series or the fast 4-cycle Atmel types would require changes in the software.
  
  
• "Why do you only provide 5MB and 10MB volumes? My HD has 1GB."
  IDEfile emulates the ProFile hardware. Though the protocol itself is flexible, the drive was only available in two sizes - 5 and 10MB. I tried bigger volume sizes, but LisaOS did not recognize them. Anything that did not enumerate as a "PROFILE 10M " $000010 or "Widget-10 " $001000 was treated as a regular ProFile with $2600 blocks only. I reckon that the drive size is hardcoded in the OS (or at least in the installer) and that LisaOS has to be patched for bigger drive sizes.
  
  If you know a spare table structure with more than 10MB that is recognized by LisaOS, please let me know.
  
  As I learned from the X/Profile page, MacWorks XL and Plus support up to 16MB resp. 32MB, therefore these volume sizes have been added in FW revision 1.05. MacWorks Plus II even supports any HFS-compatible size (up to 2GB per volume), but for this capacity you are better-off with SCSI.
  
  For owners of the SUN SCSI card, it may be interesting to know that for certain autoboot expansions writing $00 into address $FCx800 will switch to the upper (A11=1) EPROM bank, and writing $FF into the same location will switch back to the lower (A11=0) bank. x=0 for slot 1, x=4 for slot 2, and x=8 for slot 3.
  
  
• "When will Widget emulation be added?"
  As soon as I get a description of the Widget command set (or find the time to figure it out by myself)
  
  Widget drives support at least two additional commands, $26 and $13. These seem to be read multiple/write multiple functions:

  Widget Command 26h:
  
  26 00 01 00 00 C5 13		-> Hsk 22
  26 01 01 00 07 62 6E +532 bytes	-> Hsk 23
  26 01 01 00 00 2E A9 +532 bytes	-> Hsk 23
  26 00 3D 00 36 63 03		-> Hsk 22 8x
  26 00 01 00 00 2E AA		-> Hsk 22
     |      \ |  /  |
     |       \|/    checksum: NOT(byte0+...+byte5)
     |        block number
     00=read, 01=write
  
  

Apple III and Lisa

• "Can I use a drive that has been formatted by an Apple III with a Lisa and vice versa?"
  SOS and LisaOS are different operating systems, therefore the drive has to be reformatted before it can be used with the other machine. This is done by the SOS System Utility or by the LisaOS installer disk respecively. The drive does NOT need low-level formatting, only the new file system has to be created.
  
  
• "When does my drive need low-level formatting?"
  After you swapped the drive mechanism, the read/write amplifer, and after you adjusted the motor speed or the servo circuit. Besides that, low-level formatting may help refreshing old drives where the address field information faded and all spare blocks have been allocated.
  
  For a ProFile, you can check how many spares have been used by watching the power-on self test: Remove the top cover, switch it on and wait. After 18 seconds the stepper motor will move from its park position to track 77, then to track 0. After that, a surface scan of the disk is performed. You will see the step motor rotating slowly while the heads travel from track to track. Sometimes the heads jump to track 77, then the scan continues. This means a bad sector has been found. The drive does not access this sector, it uses a spare sector instead. These are located on track 77, and 32 are available.
  
  Now watch the surface scan and count the number of movements towards the spare track. A new drive uses 0..2 spares, 3..5 is means fine condition. With more than 10 spare sectors used you should look for someone with low-level formatting tools.
  
  IDEfile does neither require nor support low-level formatting, because it uses a commercial IDE drive and this delegates the task towards the drive manufacturer. In case you have to completely remove an old software installation, use the 'Z' command.
  
  
• "How is this mysterious low-level formatting done?"
  In the Usenet, many interesting stories around this topic can be found, and many people are proud to present their half-knowledge. Therefore I will explain this process here in detail.
  
  Low-level formatting means writing the low-level protocol data on a magnetic disk that is completely empty. This protocol data consists of synchronization gaps, adress marks, address fields, data marks and data fields. After that, you have a disk with tracks and sectors. Usually, low-level formatting is done at the manufacturer's site, because special equipment is needed. From now, only the data fields on the disk will be modified! The address fields are never touched again.
  
  High-level formatting means assigning these sectors to clusters, zapping their data fields, and creating a kind of data structure (FAT, HFS, ext2 or whatever) around them. This is what the PC's "format c: /u" command does.
  
  A ProFile can be formatted with a regular Apple ///. Additional hardware is not required, only software (a disk for the /// and a Z8 CPU for the drive). This is possible because the ProFile with its stepper motor has everything on board that is needed to position the read/write heads on the disk. In contrast to this, modern drives don't know where to put their voice coil arm on a brand-new disk, because they use the protocol data on the tracks as a position guide. They need an external laser interferometer as a navigation aid.
  

  Profile Format Procedure:
  
  *  Remove cover of profile. Insert Profile I/O card into slot 1 on Apple ///.
  *  Remove controller chip (U25) from  Profile controller board. Insert the
     formatter chip in its place.
  *  Connect I/O cable to Apple ///. Connect a LED to the LED output on the
     controller board.
  *  Power up the profile. When the stepper arm rotates clockwise to track 0,
     insert format program and power on the Apple ///.
  *  The LED should turn on. Put a jumper across vertical pins located between
     U23 and U24.
  *  You should see a message like "INCORRECT FD.ROM VERSION D3.11". This is
     correct and you should proceed by pressing return.
  *  The Profile should begin to format.
  *  When instructed to remove the jumper, do so.
  *  If the following tests pass, the Profile has been formatted.
  *  Remove format ROM and insert standard controller chip.
  *  Insert the FST program diskette and power up the Profile and Apple ///.
  *  This test must run for 48 hours.
  *  10-08 04 00  and 30-08 00 00 errors are allowed.
  *  If FST passed, perform a System Utilities format. The Profile is ready
     for use.
  

  Note: I do not sell or distribute copies of the formatter software or formatter chips !!! However, if your drive needs formatting and you live close to Germany, you may contact me.
  
  I don't know how low-level formatting is performed on Widgets. Any information is appreciated!
  
  
• "What can I do when formatting does not help?"
  If your unit passes its selftest after formatting, but fails again after a week or two, something in the electronic has almost died. Check all voltages from the PSU (use an oscilloscope to look for ripple), check and clean the connectors, check the rotational speed of the drive. The exact value (3600 rpm) is not critical, but there should not be any fluctuations. Electrolytic capacitor are a common cause for this kind of fault.
  
  In case the formatting routine does not succed or the unit fails immediately after formatting, the hard disk mechanism may be damaged. Big drives do not like to be moved or shaken during operation, so a head crash may have occurred. You can replace the mechanism with the one from a Seagate ST-412 drive (used in the IBM XT). This is a 10MB unit, but you will get only half of the capacity in a ProFile. The step motor in Apple's OEM drives has a finer resolution than the regular part, therefore ProFile's firmware uses only every 2nd track.
  
  Replacing the magnetic disks inside the drive mechanism is a job for the hardcore hobbyist only. You can use almost any disk that is designed for inductive heads, e.g. from a ST-225. I did this once many years ago, but that time I worked in a lab with a dust-free class-100 clean room. The fixed drive worked for quite long time, long enought to finish my emulator.

Operating Systems

• "MacWorks does not recognize my IDEfile volume at all, or does not recognize the full capacity!"
  Use the 'z'ap command to erase the volume. It seems that the installer can be disturbed by old data structures on the disk. This is not an IDEfile specific issue, it applies to all drive types.
  
  
• "MacWorks Plus does not boot MacOS when the IDEfile is connected!"
  Any boot floppy is rejected with the 'crossed disk' icon, and MacWorks frequently reads block $0182 + $0187 from disk, letting IDEfile's Ready LED flash.
  
  Disconnect the drive until MacOS has been fully loaded from floppy. Then reconnect it and run MW_Install to install MacWorks onto the harddisk. This is not an IDEfile specific issue, it applies to all drive types.
  
  
• Xenix issues:
  The ProFile driver of Lisa Xenix 3.0 has a bug that may cause handshake errors when used with a device that is significantly faster than the original ProFile: it asserts -PCMD before enabling the interrupt that should be triggered by the falling edge of -PBSY! If the drive is fast enough and has already set -PBSY in the meantime, this falling edge will never be detected, resulting in a timeout or a hanging Lisa.
  
  SigmaSeven Systems have explained this in detail here, and they also provided a patch for the ProFile driver. Though I have never observed this effect in practice with my drives, I strongly recommend using the patch. However, the first part, "a) To always send 6 command bytes", is not required by IDEfile and can be omitted.
  
  Besides that, Xenix has another interesting feature: the drive size is assumed based on the ID of the I/O Board ROM of the machine. So a Lisa 2/5 with the A8 ROM requires a 5MB drive, and a 2/10 with an 88 ROM needs 10MB to operate correctly.

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IDEfile is copyright (c) by Dr. Patrick Schäfer, 2004

Apple, Lisa, ProFile, Widget and the ProFile communications protocol are (c) by Apple Computer Inc.