GoSDC From John Kortink ----------------------- Review By Chris Richardson -------------------------- After losing my Master 128 to a disaster in the loft, lost heart and sold/gave away all my BBC computer related stuff. In due course I regretted acting so hastily and have recently acquired a Master 128. I used to have a GoMMC which was the predecessor to GoSDC. I thought a GoSDC would be a handy thing to have. This is the story of how I fitted it, set it up and how I use it. First though, a brief description of what GoSDC is. GoSDC allows you to store all your BBC software on a single SDHC, SD or MMC memory card. You can put all of your floppy discs and disc images on to the card and access them from your BBC computer as if they were physical discs. Hard discs and tapes too. Up to a 32 gigabyte card can be used, however, I start with only a 1 gigabyte card that, even with my thousands of discs, will be big enough. Transfer speeds of 100k per second. Most filing systems patched versions available to allow GoSDC to be used. Utilities included for various PC operating systems to load the card up with disc images. The main differences from GoMMC are: Tools and patched filing systems now on board the GoSDC. Card detection and write protection via switches. Auto detect of GoSDC ROM slots. Software updates via a FAT formatted flash card for easy GoSDC update. Two versions. BBC, Master and Electron (MBE) and a version that should be compatible with any 8 bit Acorn (UNI). Cheaper, and 30% smaller. Compatibility GoSDC is compatible with disc interface or no disc interface. Econet. Second processor or no second processor. BBC B OS1.20 Master MOS 3.20 or 3.50 Electron with caveats for some hardware Other machines with advice from John Kortink If you have more than one machine, GoSDC can be simply plugged into an one of them. Website: web.inter.nl.net/users/J.Kortink/index. htm Fitting And Loading Up ---------------------- Here follows a description of how I did it. There are other ways of doing it too, this is not a comprehensive list of how it can be done, for that, the GoSDC manual is the thing to read. A download from John Kortink's website contains the manual and software required. Fitting GoSDC to the Master could not have been more simple. Push it in to a free ROM slot making sure to use the spacer provided to lift the board higher than the links on the motherboard. It is a very small piece of hardware being about 6cm x 3.3cm without the SD card. After fitting the hardware, a couple of commands test the system is working properly. Then the SD card must be formatted for use with the system. This is simple and quick. Slip the card into the GoSDC, issue a * command and the card is formatted. Put the card into the PC and run the supplied software to load the card up with disc images. The card can be loaded with real discs directly from the BBC computer as well. Using a script which is just a text file with all the required commands in sequence, many disc images can be loaded onto the card in one go. I loaded the 8BS pool of over 2000 images on to the card in just a few minutes. I made the script in Excel on the PC, using various tricks like creating file listings from directories and using Excel to work fields out using the file extensions. With the card loaded up with disc images, the next job was to get them running on the Master. For GoSDC to read the disc images, it needs patched filing systems. The patched filing systems are all contained within the GoSDC. So it is just a simple matter of telling the GoSDC which filing system you want to go in which slot. Then UNPLUG the existing filing systems and that's it, on future start ups, it automatically loads the patched filing systems (up to two) into the required slots and you are almost ready to go. I do not currently have a real disc drive, so I do not need to INSERT or UNPLUG patched/original filing systems, but that is what you need to do to swap between real floppies and disc images on the GoSDC card. There are various commands available to use/view the disc images. One of which tells GoSDC which disc image to use. Hard break, then it's as if you have a real floppy in a real disc drive. On power up, GoSDC remembers which disc image you were using previously. A neat bit of kit. In the space of a couple of hours, from a cold start, not knowing anything about it, I fitted and loaded it up with over 2000 disc images. With no problems, the manual brought me through the whole procedure painlessly. It works fast! A photo of the GoSDC can be found elsewhere on this magazine disc. Thanks John.