FAST!DiskROM 1.0

Adriano Camargo Rodrigues da Cunha, developer of Uzix, has released a fast DiskROM for port-based FDCs called FAST!DiskROM. Although most MSX FDCs are not port-based, many MSX fans in (mainly) South America will enjoy this update, which increases disk read spead until up to 20kB/s on an ordinary 3.5MHz MSX. Ordinary, port-based FDC controllers only reach about 5kB/s, whilst most European/Japanese MSX computers averate about 10kB/s.

FAST!DiskROM supports all standard MSX floppy formats (5 1/4 SS, 5 1/4 DS, 3 1/2 SS, 3 1/2 DS) and is 100% compatible with DOS2 (most brazilian FDCs aren't compatible with DOS2). Further features of FAST!DiskROM are:

• Floppies formatted with FAST! have a DOS2 boot as default (which also boots SOLXDOS or MSXDOS)
• Supports up to 4 drives connected to a single interface
• Connected drives may use any DS# signal (no need to solder PC drives to change their DS# signal anymore)
• Internal CALL CHKDSK command scans and marks bad clusters on a floppy
• Formatting options include formatting a disk with interleave 1:1 and 2:1
• A minimum of 57400 bytes of free memory is available even with 8 drives on one system (this means at least 25400 bytes will be free for MSX-BASIC)
• On a MSX machine without RTC, a software clock is enabled (time can be changed using the standard MSXDOS command TIME)
• Fast initialization during MSX boot
• Supports multiple port-based interfaces when using the DDX3.0 FDC hardware

Apart from its use in emulation, FAST!DiskROM can be used to replace the ROMs of the Microsol (CDX2), DDX 1.0, DDX 1.2, Liftron 2.7, DMX 1.2 and all DDX 3.0 series FDCs. On Adriano's website, FAST!DiskROM can be found in the MSX Software section on the MSX page.

Relevant link: Adriano's website