What’s needed to get this working?

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There are a few aspects to getting this project working and the Yamaha disk controller replaced:

  1. Physically replacing the adapter and attached drive. The adapter is a drop-in replacement for the Yamaha controller. You’ll also need an ATA (IDE) hard drive or CompactFlash adapter and suitable cables.
  2. Correctly configuring the system via the DIP switches. This likely requires some trial-and-error, since the machine needs to be configured not to initialise the factory provided HDD BIOS, but retain the ability to run an option ROM. There is also uncertainty in the configuration of the RESET signal (due to contradictory documentation) and whilst provision for this is provided on the adapter via jumpers, this all needs working out.
  3. Patching in and configuring the XTIDE Universal BIOS. There is plenty of space in the system ROM for the code, and a prototype BIOS is available via the wiki page.
  4. Patching out the Yamaha disk controller BIOS – Maybe!

In short: a working C1 and time (and inclination) to do some discovery and tinkering.

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