23 Feb
2011
23 Feb
'11
9:54 a.m.
On 23 Feb 2011 at 7:25, Steven Hirsch wrote:
And, since there's clearly no further development
for the "official"
CW software, it's hightly annoying that he has not offered source code
to permit others to pick up the baton.
The technical documentation for the CW is a real mess and even after
about 5 read-throughs is just short of incomprehensible.
That's strange--I've been with the CW since the first ISA model and
found the card very easy to write for--much easier than, say,
graphics hardware. My current version is a CW3--there wasn't
anything that the CW4 would do that I can do with CW3, so I didn't
bother.
There are several examples of open-source code that demonstrate how
the CW works.
When Jens comes along with a CW with USB interface, I'll probably buy
it.
There are substantial differences between the way the various models
structure their registers, but even so, it's not hard to write "C"
code to work with either.
In fact, if anyone cares, I'll volunteer my Microsoft "C" 16-bit code
that runs under MS-DOS for basic access to anyone who'd like it.
The rest of the process is understanding the nature of magnetic
recording.
In fact, you can roll your own Catweasel. Just grab a
microcontroller with the capability of adding extra RAM (128K-512K)
and use the "capture" timer mode to sample the data stream. Control
is easy and the interface to a floppy drive is just as simple.
Phil's product is interesting because it will handle MFM hard disks.
--Chuck