BMS-100 Hard Disk Interface

Post by Steven Schweda
I'm trying to help a friend rehabilitate a long-stored
Atari 1024ST (F). The kit includes a Berkeley Microsystems
BMS-100 Hard Disk Interface, complete with a couple of
defective MFM (ST506) disks. My plan was to ignore the
Adaptec ACB-4000 card, and try it with an old (100MB) SCSI
disk. Sadly, we haven't found the floppy with the software
for the BMS-100. From the manual, I gather that it would
include such things as BMSINIT.PRG, INITCLK.PRG, INSTALL.PRG,
and SETCLK.PRG (and a sample BMSINIT.DAT, but I might be able
to fake that).
So, is this stuff available anywhere these days? Google
and I didn't find anything which looked helpful.

The Atari AHDI is available and will work with most interfaces.

Post by Steven Schweda
I never did much with one of these systems, and there
doesn't seem to be much useful software in our collection.
Are people still mailing floppies around, or is there some
simple way to get something from a computer with an Internet
connection onto one of these things? (Is there a Kermit or
something to use with the serial port? And how would I get
that loaded?)
Any pointers to useful info would be gratefully received.

Steven Schweda

2010-06-11 13:50:35 UTC

Post by Steven Schweda
Any pointers to useful info would be gratefully received.

The Atari AHDI is available and will work with most interfaces.

And I might find this where, exactly? (And the BMS-100 is
among this "most"?)

I did receive a BMS-100 software kit from a kind group
reader (files dated 21-NOV-1985), and I managed to transfer
the files to a DOS/FAT floppy (DD) which the Atari system
could read. Sadly, BMSINIT.PRG (et al.) seem to be happy only
when the BMS card is connected to the Adaptec ACB-4000 card,
and it, in turn, is connected to an ST506-compatible disk
drive. (Otherwise, the DMA device selection list is all
grayed-out.) My supply of MFM disk drives is quite limited
(and that of working ones even mode so), so I was hoping to
connect a small (<=1GB) SCSI drive directly to the BMS card,
eliminating the Adaptec card, but I have not been able to make
this work.

Any additional wisdom (or pointers to same) would be
welcome.

Dave Wade

2010-06-11 22:08:27 UTC

Post by Steven Schweda
Any pointers to useful info would be gratefully received.

http://www.umich.edu/~archive/atari/Diskutils/

Post by Dave Wade
The Atari AHDI is available and will work with most interfaces.

And I might find this where, exactly? (And the BMS-100 is
among this "most"?)

I don't know. Its not one I am familiar with...

Post by Steven Schweda
I did receive a BMS-100 software kit from a kind group
reader (files dated 21-NOV-1985), and I managed to transfer
the files to a DOS/FAT floppy (DD) which the Atari system
could read. Sadly, BMSINIT.PRG (et al.) seem to be happy only
when the BMS card is connected to the Adaptec ACB-4000 card,
and it, in turn, is connected to an ST506-compatible disk
drive. (Otherwise, the DMA device selection list is all
grayed-out.) My supply of MFM disk drives is quite limited
(and that of working ones even mode so), so I was hoping to
connect a small (<=1GB) SCSI drive directly to the BMS card,
eliminating the Adaptec card, but I have not been able to make
this work.
Any additional wisdom (or pointers to same) would be
welcome.

Dave Wade

2010-06-13 11:39:26 UTC

Post by Steven Schweda
Any pointers to useful info would be gratefully received.

http://www.umich.edu/~archive/atari/Diskutils/

Post by Dave Wade
The Atari AHDI is available and will work with most interfaces.

And I might find this where, exactly? (And the BMS-100 is
among this "most"?)

I don't know. Its not one I am familiar with...

Just for completeness there are some more modern drivers available,
HDDRIVER. Info here:-

http://www.seimet.de/atari/en/hddriveroverview.html

And cbhd, info here:-

http://www.clausbrod.de/cgi-bin/view.pl/Atari/CBHD

I have a licensed copy of HDDRIVER its very good and support is excellent,
but the demo won't format a disk.
When I last messed I seem to recall I used CBHD to partition and format the
drive but needed HDDRIVER to reliably access it. However I thin CBHD has
since been updated.

Did the drive you tried have a parity disable link? Did you disable parity
on the drive?
From what I remember some of the older software has a disk parameter file
that may need tweaking for real scsi drives.

Post by Steven Schweda
Any additional wisdom (or pointers to same) would be
welcome.

Dave Wade

2010-06-13 11:43:16 UTC

Post by Steven Schweda
Any pointers to useful info would be gratefully received.

http://www.umich.edu/~archive/atari/Diskutils/

Post by Dave Wade
The Atari AHDI is available and will work with most interfaces.

And I might find this where, exactly? (And the BMS-100 is
among this "most"?)

I don't know. Its not one I am familiar with...

Sorry to "spam" , on further searching I note Roger Burrows who produce some
fine CD reader software mentions the BMS on his pages:-

http://www.anodynesoftware.com/e4/hardware.htm

So I assume the BMS can be used for normal SCSI CD's so I assume it works
with SCSI disks. He used to drop in here, but it might be worth e-mailing
hime to see if he has any info about specific setups.

Götz Hoffart

2010-06-13 21:05:32 UTC

Post by Steven Schweda
I did receive a BMS-100 software kit from a kind group
reader (files dated 21-NOV-1985)

It would be great to upload/publish them to the public so that everybody
else facing this problem in the future searching for a solution will
find not only "ha, I got it, thanks" but a download URL.

Regards
Götz

--
http://www.knubbelmac.de/

r***@sympatico.ca

2010-06-18 09:38:53 UTC