26 Jun
2002
26 Jun
'02
11:48 a.m.
Joe,
That makes quite a bit of sense, and how I remember the cabling as
well. I need to make a suitable cable to go from the drive controller
to the option board it would seem. The issue is probably whether or not
the cable has a twist - I would assume it would NOT, since the standard
floppy cable would take care of that.
I've been meaning to set the Option Board up once my PC is back
together, and saw this picture on Ebay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2034301058
Looking at the stylized picture on the manual cover, it appears the OB
is replacing the drive controller. Needless to say this doesn't mean
much. I think it's safe to assume that the controller sits between the
drives and the OEM controller.
Would anyone happen to have a manual that could confirm our suspicians?
Thanks,
Jeff
On Wed, 2002-06-26 at 15:50, Joe wrote:
Jeff,
I used to have one of these so I'll try to answer your questions as best as I can
remember. It goes between the regular disk controller and the floppy drives. I *believe*
you remove the cable from the existing disk controller and plug it into the card edge
connector on the Option card (that preserves any cable twists and drive addresssing) and
then installed a supplied cable between the edge connector of the existing controller and
the row of pins on the Option board. Yes, it can handle two drives. In fact, IIRC it will
handle four drives if your system can handle four drives on a single cable. It does
NOTHING during normal system operation. But when you run the Central Point SW it
completely takes over control of the drives and copies (or edits) ANYTHING on the disk
that the drive can physically access including all the stuff that MS-DOS and standard
drive controllers can't access. You can access 40+ tracks (as many as 43 depending on
the drive) and you can copy, access!
, edit the address blocks, CRC blocks, etc etc. It can even simulate a laser burned spot
or weakly magnetized sectors on a disk. Both of these were commonly used anti-disk
copying gimmicks. I never found a copy protected disk that I couldn't duplicate with
the Option card. I wish I''d keep mine.
Joe
At 06:17 PM 6/26/02 -0400, you wrote:
Central Point Deluxe Option board: I don't recall how this card is
supposed to interface with the disks. There is a card edge connector
and a row of pins on the board. Does the board go inbetween the FDC and
drives, or does it replace the floppy controller entirely? Any special
cabling required, and can it run two drives?
Thanks,
Jeff