Thanx d-tail. Great info. Sorry to hear your project all but died. Maybe this project will see the light of day. It really sounds promising.

I hope Jan or Aaldert will show up shortly to shed some more light on the product; I'm afraid I know no more than I already wrote...

From the flyer:
It can also be used as ATA(-IDE), Memory Mapper, RS232, etc.

How about obsonet? With the current low availability of obsonet cartridges such an alternative would be welcome, and when an obsonet cartridge is useful, a pc is often in the neighbourhood.

arnold_m: that's just a matter of how to flash the ROM on it. As stated, it could be able to emulate an IDE-interface (as it already contains a disk-ROM). Memory mapper -- well, there seems enough free space in flash memory to emulate a 4MB mapper. RS232 - I'm not quite sure how the hardware designers thought to implement that one, but I assume it will communicate thru the drivers thru the COM-port of the PC or something. An obsoNET could be emulated in the same way. Now this is purely a speculation, but there's actually no limit to the device.

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I have waited quite a long for this kind of device to appear. I really hope this project will finish! I also hope, that if you make it, you keep the programming interface free. I think there are many ways to use this kind of MSX cart <-> PC USB system. As MSX side needs disk ROM, I hope you'll implement it with flash just in case 1.0 is not perfect...

Hi, i'm one of the developers. To answer the question above, we will keep the programming interface free. We will provide some basic functionality, but we would also like others to be able to develop their own applications for it. Our prototype already works fine and it's a whole lot faster than a normal disk. About the other question, yes, we are using flashRom. This enables easy updating and furthermore, you can write your own software for it. Sorry that i don't have any more information at this moment. We will make a website with addition info soon.

One of the problems we are having at this moment, is the cartridge casing. For our prototypes we want to using old cartridge cases and strip them from their interior. But is their a way to obtain new cartridge cases?
Aaldert

Perhaps Sunrise can order a new batch of their cases and sell them to other HW-developers?

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One of the problems we are having at this moment, is the cartridge casing. For our prototypes we want to using old cartridge cases and strip them from their interior. But is their a way to obtain new cartridge cases?

Is it legal to produce copies of the original cartridge casings? If so, maybe we should go to a company producing plastic casings and ask them to copy it. If we would order a higher amount, maybe the price would be acceptable.

Some comments on the 32Mb flashRom mentioned above. There is a probability that we will implement 32 Mb, but not in the prototypes. These will probably contain 2Mb of flashRom. It can be used as a kind of extra disk, which can (for example) store msxdos2.sys and command.com to enable fast booting. But it might also be used for other applications.

We will probably develop the device will different amounts of flash. The low cost version will have 2Mb.

Sunrise has cartridge cases made and uses it for e.g. the IDE interface. Sunrise has sold empty cases in the past to other developers and hobbyists. Ask Rob. Recommended!

Yeah, if I'm not mistaken Hans Tillema (are all hardware developers called 'Hans' by any chance? ;-)) has about 100 of these casings lying around... Never heard of them again ^_^

Hi, I'm Jan Wilmans, also a developer on the USB-interface, to answer some of the questions above:
We are currently exploring how to use a patched diskrom legally. Does anyone know how sunrise did this with their IDE and FLASH interfaces?
The diskrom we're using our prototypes are able to use just FAT12 diskimages, but we're currently working on a patched IDE/DOS2 rom to enable the use of FAT16 and 32MB harddisk-images. (one file per partition your create).

D-tail: could you ask Hans Tillema to contact me? I would like to have some of those cases if he still has them..

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We are currently exploring how to use a patched diskrom legally. Does anyone know how sunrise did this with their IDE and FLASH interfaces?

I do not know how legal the Sunrise IDE diskrom is, you might ask Sunrise!
The IDE interface was developed in a period when, especially outside Japan, ASCII seemed to have lost all public interest in MSX and perhaps was even not responding to license requests from a hobbyist like Henrik Gilvad .

Most diskroms seem to come from the same example source, most likely distributed by ASCII to hardware developers. Parts of that can be seen in the various MSX Technical references books.
Ofcourse a diskrom is made up of a (large) standard interface part so it can be recognized by the MSX BIOS and used by Disk Basic. The hardware dependent part is the only, often small, specific part. I assume you can feel safe legal if you strip out hardware specific parts of existing diskrom sources and leave the generic part and add your own hardware specific part!

The first diskrom I know of not by the known MSX hardware internationals was developed in Europe for the HSH SCSI hard disk interface. I cannot proof it but I really doubt HSH sold legal licensed diskroms (or legal MSX-DOS 2!)
These diskroms were adapted and improved and altered for various hard disk systems with the same hardware controller, the latest and greatest being the Novaxis SCSI ROM.
The B.E.R.T. interface uses a different controller but a similar diskrom.
Other diskroms also appeared, sometimes to implement a concept similar to this USB project, like CONNECT by Ries Vriend. Never heard of legal issues with any of these diskroms!

Did you see the collection of (hard)diskrom sources I have collected?