Floppy disc reader/writer status report

Jules Richardson wrote: I dunno. If I have a lapse in sanity I'll write it in Java (which means it'll run veeery slooowly on just about anything), otherwise I'll use it as an excuse to learn wxWidgets (which means it'll run on Windows, Linux, OS X and BSD, which covers about 95% of the market). In any case, I want it to run on Linux as a bare minimum. PCI?! PCI?! Why the hell would I do something as monumentally STUPID as that? After all, the PCI-SIG's licence fees are 'just a bit' steep IMO :) My plan is to do a USB version that's small enough to shove into a laptop bag with a wall-wart and a 3.5" drive so that you can handle the "Joe Bloggs has the discs, will let someone image them, but won't let the Royal Mail handle them" type situations quite easily, while also being able to hook up adapter cables to use other drive types (e.g. 8"). ST-506 is coming in Version 2 :) Maybe. IDC headers are pretty cheap. I don't have many in stock ATM though - just a couple of 34-way box headers and a few PC floppy cables. Argh, I'm going to have to read through those Shugart manuals again! Speaking of precompensation, does anyone know anything about the innards of the 'write precompensation' (early/late/normal) stuff that's generally a part of most modern floppy controllers? I'm curious to find out what that actually does, and if I need to do it on my controller. You're after sixteen addressable drives then. Ooookay... The plan is to have all four on the I/O (has anyone trademarked the name 'DriveBus'?) connector, then wire just the first two to the PC-FDD connector. If you want to use a single drive, wire it up with a PC cable, then set the software to 'single or double drive mode with PC selects'. Other modes might include '8/16 drives with decoder' or '4 drives with one-hot/one-cold selection'. I'm keeping that in. I want to be able to hook up a 5.25" FDD and a 3.5" FDD at the same time. Remember - I'm building this thing as a combination analyser/imager (hence the name - Data Analysis and Recovery Toolkit) with the primary goal being to be able to image 'odd' floppy formats that a PC controller just can't touch. There are a few other things I'd like it to be able to do: - Can copy the BBC Elite floppy, copy protection and all (I know someone in Stockport that has a BBC B and a copy of Elite - cloning his master disc before his eyes without removing the protection would be fantastically cool, if only to see the grin on his face) - Can copy Amiga 'Rob Northen Copylock' protected discs, and read out the disc serial number (this protection has been 'uncopiable without a Trace duplicator' for far too long) - Full decode support for Commodore GCR, Apple GCR, PC MFM, PC FM, and whatever other formats I can get hold of formatting specs for. If/when I release the hardware (I might do a small production run if anyone's interested), I might do a "send me a disc and I'll add image and/or decode support" type service. Could be fun. I've got a couple of exams to study for this week, but I've got from Friday night onwards to play with expensive CAD software, corrosive chemicals, hot soldering irons and homebrew hardware. Yay me :) FWIW, by "decode support", I mean "take the raw bitstream and turn it into bytes, then decode those into sectors". I'm not doing filesystem decoding, that can wait until later. Thanks. -- Phil. | (\_/) This is Bunny. Copy and paste Bunny classiccmp at philpem.me.uk | (='.'=) into your signature to help him gain http://www.philpem.me.uk/ | (")_(") world domination.