Seems like it should be simple, but it is not.
I have a pair of Goteks with the Flaashfloppy code and each one has a
USB with 400k RX50 images on it. Both are set to drive 2, and a standard
40 pin floppy crossover cable allows me to emulate a pair of drives.
Now, I want to replace the RX50 drive on my Pro/380 with this setup to
allow it to install POS. However it does not work, the Pro fails startup
with an error on the floppy controller board, and so far it looks like
POS can't see the disks.
So what is the difference between an RX50 and a pair of 5.25 drives, and
is it possible for Flashfloppy to emulate whatever oddness is in a true
rx50?
CZ
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Chris,
I, too, tried a similar thing.
It mostly worked until there was a need to switch quickly between the
two drives (booting the diagnostics, for example). Then it worked
strangely.
What I believe may be going on is that the Pro is relying on the fact
that, although there appear to be 2 drives attached, they are using the
same head positioning -- they seek in parallel.
I thought about hacking the Flashfloppy code to pay attention to the
drive select and allow a single Gotek to emulate both drives (and take
into account the parallel seeking), but I just ended up using a real
RX50 to boot diagnostics and that was good enough at the time. The big
problem is that the Flashfloppy would need to have 2 disk images mounted
at once. There's a problem of limited RAM in the Flashfloppy, but
there's also a problem of the UI which is really set up for only a
single image.
--Bjoren
On 3/2/2023 3:25 PM, Chris Zach via cctalk wrote:
> Seems like it should be simple, but it is not.
>
> I have a pair of Goteks with the Flaashfloppy code and each one has a
> USB with 400k RX50 images on it. Both are set to drive 2, and a
> standard 40 pin floppy crossover cable allows me to emulate a pair of
> drives.
>
> Now, I want to replace the RX50 drive on my Pro/380 with this setup to
> allow it to install POS. However it does not work, the Pro fails
> startup with an error on the floppy controller board, and so far it
> looks like POS can't see the disks.
>
> So what is the difference between an RX50 and a pair of 5.25 drives,
> and is it possible for Flashfloppy to emulate whatever oddness is in a
> true rx50?
>
> CZ