amiga-news.de - Open source projects: IDE driver lide.device and CDTV extension CIDER

13.Apr.2024 Open source projects: IDE driver lide.device and CDTV extension CIDER
The Amiga community is full of projects that initially go largely unnoticed despite their innovative power. The "lide.device" along with the so-called "CIDER" board were both developed by New Zealander Matt "LIV2" Harlum.

Just about a year ago, in January 2023, Harlum presented the open source-based hardware project CIDER on GitHub in collaboration with Stefan Reinauer. The combined expansion card for the Amiga CDTV is plugged into the diagnostic interface and adds three innovative features to the machine. The centrepiece is an autoboot-capable IDE interface that is compatible with KickROM 1.3. The CDTV also gains 11.37 MB of additional Fast RAM memory and a practical, programmable Dual Kickstart Flash-ROM function. The board can be rebuilt for private use using the Gerber data provided if you have the appropriate skills and expertise.

Matt Harlum was looking for a suitable IDE driver for this CIDER board and decided against the existing solutions "scsi.device" and "oktapus.device" due to their limitations in terms of speed, compatibility with Kickstart 1.3, as found in CDTV, and the legal situation regarding redistribution. This led to the development of lide.device, which was also published as open source under the GPL 2.0 licence for the first time in July 2023. The current version 40.5 is dated 20 December 2023 and can be downloaded free of charge from GitHub.

The lide.device allows the use of drives up to 2 TB in size (when using a suitable file system, such as FFS from AmigaOS 3.2, SFS or PFS). The system can boot from various media such as CD, LS-120 or ZIP, an autoboot function is provided. The driver also supports a second IDE channel.

What is interesting about the lide driver is not only its functionality and its open source aspect, but also the fact that the driver is not only suitable for the CDTV and the CIDER originally designed for it. Matt Harlum developed the RIPPLE board with the aim of making the effort and innovation behind "lide.device" available to more than just a small number of CDTV owners. This board broadens the application possibilities of the driver and supports the two-channel IDE mode.

On the GitHub page of the lide.device under the title link, in addition to the source codes, three builds of the lide ROMs are also available for download, in addition to the CIDER version also a ROM for AT-Bus devices such as AT-Bus 2008 or AT-Bus Clone IDE Interface by Matze.

When asked by amiga-news.de, Matt Harlum explains: "Of course the board ends up looking similar to the Buddha (Buddha IDE, editor's note) but this is only because the form factor makes a lot of sense for a small, 2-channel IDE board - similar layouts have even been used for PCI IDE interfaces."

We will keep an eye on the further development of CIDER, lide.device and RIPPLE and report on progress for you as usual. (nba)

[News message: 13. Apr. 2024, 20:02] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]

< Next message

Prior message >