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Retro-computing Interface Machine

I needed a machine that can interface to a variety of old hardware, floppies, and manage a bit of file sharing.

Specs

• K6-III+ 450 Mhz
• 512 MB
• Needham's EMP-20
• Generic clone mini-tower
• TEAC 3.5" 1.44MB
• TEAC 5.25" 1.2MB
• Catweasel MK4 PCI
• <a href="../dtc-7287/">DTC 7287 RLL controller</a>
• Transcend 8GB PATA SSD

OS

I hate Windows but

ImageDisk, TeleDisk, etc: DOS.<br>

MFM/RLL controllers: DOS is probably best.<br>

Catweasel: Windows, Linux.<br>

Best floppy support (Catweasel aside): DOS, Windows.<br>

Z80 simulator IDE: Windows, or Linux via Wine.<br>

Needham's EMP-20 EPROM burner: DOS or Win 9x.<br>

Tolerable usability: Linux.<br>

Best networking: Linux.<br>

Works on old machine: DOS, or others with excessive effort.<br>

Still updated: Anything but Win 9x.<br>

Stable: Anything but Win 9x.<br>

No obnoxious licensing: Anything but Windows.<br>

Install Notes

Install Debian Linux. During install, partition disk for both Linux and DOS.

• Mount DOS partition as a data-sharing area.
• NFS mount server.
• Install cw2dmk.
• Install dosbox.

Install FreeDOS and utilities (Teledisk, ImageDisk, ...)

RLL Controller

DTC 7287 RLL controller, for low-level formatting old hard drives and bringing them back to life.

TODO: Notes on getting an old RLL controller to play nicely with a more modern IDE system... disable one of the floppy controllers, boot from IDE, ...

References

One purpose of this machine is to be able to work with floppies. I have more floppy notes over here:

../../using/floppies.gmi