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Adding Modern Storage to Retro Computers
Old computers are cool, but hundreds and hundreds of cassette tapes, floppy discs, cartridges and cd-roms is most definitely not. They also take up a huge amount of room.
Most of my retro systems have at least one type of more modern mass-storage device, some more useable than others.
Acorn RiscPC 700
The RiscPC has standard IDE headers and can use industry standard IDE hard drives, Compact Flash adaptors and optical drives.
Currently fitted: Internal IDE to Compact Flash adapter + 8GB CF card.
Acorn A7000
As per RiscPC, the A7000 has standard IDE.
Currently fitted: Internal IDE to Compact Flash adapter + 8GB CF card.
Amiga 500
No mass-storage provision as standard.
Amiga 1200
On board 44pin 2.5“ IDE header was fitted as standard.
Currently fitted: 3.5” drive bay with Compact Flash reader to IDE. SCSI CD reader attached to Blizzard SCSI IV.
Amstrad CPC
No mass storage as standard
Apple Macintosh IICi
Came with SCSI 1 onboard controller.
Currently fitted: Aztec CF Monster, SCSI to IDE/CF bridge card and Compact Flash card.
Supplier: http://www.artmix.com/CF_AztecMonster.html
Price: No longer available
- Atari Jaguar
No mass storage as standard
- Atari ST
Added an UltraSatan twin SD card reader, attached to the Atari SCSI port on the rear of the machine.
- MSX
Added a MegaFlashROM SCC+ SD cartridge with micro SD slot, 512k memory expansion and Konami sound hardware emulation.
- NEC PC-9801 / PC-9821
Takes standard EIDE devices. Has native capacity restrictions (4.3GB, 8GB, etc) to various low-sized IDE drives. Burned a replacement IDE ROM BIOS into an addon card and am currently using an 80GB 2.5“ ATA drive.
- NEC PC-Engine / Duo
Have the original Turbo Everdrive 1.x, which adds a micro SD card which allows loading of cart based games.
Also have the replacement Turbo Everdrive 2, which has a micro SD card to load cart based games, but also adds 4MB of memory for use with CD, Super CD and Arcade Card CD game titles.
Latest acquisition is a Super SD System 3, which has a micro SD card to load cart and CD based games, as well as the memory expansion for all CD titles.
- Nintendo DS
Added a Cyclo DS Evolution flash card for the DS side of things in slot 1.
Added an EZ Flash IV for the GBA side of things in slot 2.
- Nintendo Gameboy Advance
- Nintendo Gamecube
No mass storage device at present.
- Nintendo SNES
Added a SNES Powerpak to load games from CF card. Supports normal games and those with DSP1 chip. No other special cart support.
- Sega Dreamcast
Added a GDEMU SD card adapter to the Dreamcast which replaces the GDROM drive unit.
- Sega Game Gear
- Sega MasterSystem
- Sega Megadrive
- Sega Saturn
Added a RHEA, by the producer of the GDEMU. It's a replacement drive unit that swaps with the CDROM of the Saturn and plays game images from SD card.
Also added an Action Replace 4M+, which allows bypassing country lockouts, a better RHEA menu interface etc. Really, the two things are needed together.
- Sinclair ZX Spectrum
Initially, I owned a DivIDE Plus interface, taking CF cards and with a full size 40-pin IDE interface, as well as additional RAM for various Spectrum DOS versions.
Recently replaced with a DIVMMC Enjoy Pro One, which does the same or similar thing, with SD cards and is a lot smaller, as well as having joystick ports and more features built in.
- Sony Playstation
Added the PSIO cartridge that plugs into the parallel port and loads games from SD card.
- Sony PS2
The PS2 has native IDE device support (phat models only). Via a modchip, games can be stored on the IDE drive and run directly from there. Currently fitted with a 500GB 2.5” IDE drive.
- Vectrex
Added (many years ago) one of the early versions of the VecFlash carts. Mine is one of the original serial connected devices, not the modern USB.