[sdiy] USB,SCSI,MIDI

[Ben Lincoln]

Colin f wrote:
> That's true - I previously used a SCSI to IDE adaptor in an EMU ESI2000.
> It wouldn't work going through the normal format procedure, as the SCSI'd
> IDE drive wouldn't respond to a SCSI Format command.
> But there was a hidden option in the ESI to 'write file system only',
> without doing the format instruction.
> That worked perfectly for both IDE drives and CF on the SCSI adaptor.
> YMMV.
>   
If there is a particularly beloved model or two of device that uses a 
proprietary format and also won't cooperate with an adapted IDE drive or 
CF card, I would think the best approach would again be similar to what 
some console hackers have done: get an actual SCSI drive formatted for 
the device, connect it to a PC, and use a disk imaging tool to copy the 
raw data from it to as many IDE drives or CF cards as you like.
I don't know if any off-the-shelf imaging software (e.g. Ghost) can 
write an arbitrary image to a CF card (my reverse-engineering to date 
has been limited to binary files, not raw bits on physical media), but 
maybe dd on Linux would work?
I believe the Xbox hackers actually ended up taking a disk image and 
reverse-engineering it to the point that they could write a formatting 
utility which would allow them to use new drives of arbitrary sizes, 
although I may be thinking of a different platform. For disk formats 
from the 80s and 90s, I think this should be pretty easy since space 
efficiency was more important than obfuscating the format.