17 May
2023
17 May
'23
7:59 a.m.
On Wed, May 17, 2023 at 5:54 AM Chuck Guzis via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
On 5/16/23 21:29, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
For years I have been telling the community that flux transition is
easy-peasy on modern MCUs. You have fast timers, "capture mode" and
even DMA for the capture process.
[..]
From what
I've heard, there has been substantial progress on the flux
transition devices,
with decoding the track to sectors, and even support
of some file systems!
It's not hard!
It's not hard if you know about modern microcontrollers, know how to
program them, know how to handle the USB interface back to the modern
machine, know how to write programs on said modern machine to talk to
the microcontroller over the USB interface and so on.
I know NONE of that.
It's not hard to rebuild a floppy drive and align it from scratch.
It's not hard to understand the microcode in an HP9830 and its HP11305
disk control. It's not hard to replace heads in an RK05. It's not hard
to wire up a processor from a pile of TTL chps. It's not hard to make
an interface between a Trend HSR500P tape reader and a TRS-80 CoCo.
It's not hard to rebullt a rotary telephone dial. it's not hard to
repair a spring-driven chiming/striking clock. It's not hard to...
I've done them all over the years. This does not mean I can design and
build a flux-transition type of floppy disk reader/writer. Actually I
probaably could if I had to but I understand such devices already
exist so I'd rather use a known design if there is a recomended one,
one that people have experience of.
-tony