In 2010 - before SIDE and IDE Plus 2.0 were released - there seemed a dearth of hard disk interfaces available for the 8-bit Atari, so I was delighted when a fellow Atarian from overseas sold me his IDEa interface. Unfortunately it took months of troubleshooting to get the device working properly (eventually I fixed it by replacing the ROM chip), and by this time other interfaces were on the horizon. Nevertheless, I always really liked the IDEa and I received a lot of mentoring from Konrad Kokoszkiewicz, the author of its firmware. Having just finished the SpartaDOS X soft-drivers, I was keen to try my hand at a PBI driver. Initial experiments were unsuccessful, and I refused Konrad's offer of non-disclosable source code for the original ROM. Nevertheless, the first ever APT PBI driver was the one I developed for the IDEa, and this paved the way for the Ultimate 1MB and Incognito PBI drivers. Although I didn't release the IDEa ROM at the time, I continued to develop it, and eventually I fitted the IDEa inside my modified Atari 1200XL, where it runs with a Compact Flash adapter fitted to a repositioned IDE header.
I should point out that this ROM is in no way intended as a replacement for Konrad's original firmware: it is offered as an alternative for those who wish to use the newly developed APT partitioning scheme on the device, to facilitate media-compatibility with modern interfaces like SIDE and Incognito. Konrad has concentrated on providing APT support for the new IDE Plus 2.0 interface, meanwhile.
Note: Konrad warned me that he experienced stability issues with a developmental banked PBI ROM he wrote for the IDEa interface some years ago. Although I have experienced no issues at all with this new banked APT ROM in daily use, it should nevertheless be considered a beta driver, and you should refrain from giving it access to your APT media until you have found the IDEa to be stable in operation using this ROM. Prior to the ROM's release, only myself and Steve Carden (to the best of my knowledge) have used it.
The ZIP file contains both a 4KB ROM file and a 128KB BIN file for flashing to the programmable ROM chip on your IDEa. If you need to manufacture a BIN image for use with a different chip (i.e. larger or smaller than 128KB), simply concatenate the 4KB ROM file onto itself until it fills the chip space.
APT PBI ROM 0.2 for the IDEa Hard Disk Interface
Note: this ROM is ONLY for the version 2 IDEa interface, NOT for the original KMK/JZ interface. If you require a version for the original (non-bank-switched) interface, please email me.
Since this ROM requires field testing, I'd appreciate any feedback on it.
IDEa APT PBI ROM by flashjazzcat