KryoFlux - imaging of vintage floppy disks via USB

On Wed, 2011-11-02 at 23:32 +0000, Kieron Wilkinson wrote: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that: 1) The IPF library was read-only 2) There were no publicly-available documents covering the IPF file format 3) No documents have been released as part of the source dump (thus satisfying (2)) Thus, creating an IPF would involve reverse-engineering the format from the source code (which I have not examined closely, but appears to be somewhat Windows-centric and lightly commented based on the few files I've examined). Once the format was r/e'd, you could then write a library to create IPFs... Seems a lot of work. I'd rather put the effort into writing a .MFI (MESS Floppy Image) R/W library... I'm going to pull out a 9mm and shoot myself in the foot here. * Kryoflux and DiscFerret are two separate things. * Kryoflux does a good job of imaging most floppy discs * Key differences between DiscFerret and Kryoflux: * DiscFerret uses "store and forward" acquisition. KryoFlux (AIUI) streams data directly to the PC. This means DiscFerret is slightly slower to read and write discs (by around 1 minute). * DiscFerret has more usable I/O lines, plus the 4-bit bidirectional High Speed I/O link (four pins which may be programmed for any purpose; GPIO, SPI, etc. and used for I/O expansion) * DiscFerret captures data at a much higher resolution (approx. 4x Kryoflux's peak rate, and twice the Mk4 Catweasel). This means you can image hard drives (ST506 type) and 2.88MB floppy discs, with suitable adapter cables. * DiscFerret has full support for both hard-sectored and soft-sectored media, including reading individual sectors. CW could do this too, AIUI. On the down side, DiscFerret is currently lacking in software. I have a tweaked version of CWTOOL which sort-of works with DFI images, but falls over quite a lot. Disc reading works, but writing needs work (mainly timing characterisation and modelling). The DiscFerret is no better. They're sold more or less at cost... -- Phil. philpem at philpem.me.uk http://www.philpem.me.uk/