3 Aug
2005
3 Aug
'05
8:27 a.m.
On Wednesday 03 August 2005 09:53, Dave Dunfield wrote:
Yes. - What happens when the catweasel becomes unavailable?
What happens when (disk controller of choice) become unavailable? :)
The people making it aren't a "huge corporation", they're just regular
people, and I'm sure you could talk to them about such things.
Fine, buy one off ebay for less than $100, and get it within a week.
That's what I did. The catweasel is a great product for its price,
IMO.
I don't have enough parts in my junk bin to build a disk controller, and
there's a lot of people that don't have the skills to assemble
something like that.
I know a lot of people that wouldn't build ANY hardware. Even more
people (like myself) would rather spend the money for a catweasel than
try to find parts and build something that doesn't have the
functionality of a catweasel.... Do you think you'll get your WD chip
solution to read Apple ][ or C64 (1571-written) disks? I'm doubtful at
best. That's a huge volume of the disks I've got laying around and
eventually want to make images of.
If you're supposing the user can wire up a disk controller, why can't
they wire up a simple 34(SA400) to 50(SA800) pin adapter cable? Also,
you can buy an SA400/SA800 adaptor board that someone has made, which
properly controls the TG43 line. Unfortunately, I can't remember the
name of the board or who made it right now.
There's no reason a bit of C wrapper code has to be tied to any
particular 'development environment'.
I'd say that by ignoring (specifically) Apple ][ and C64, you're missing
a large percentage of possible software/users.
The idea is to make a small single-board computer with
a
microcontroller, a WD2793 or similar floppy disk controller,
enough memory to buffer a few tracks, and a high-speed serial port
for communication with the PC. The board would have connectors for
5.25"/3" drives and 8" drives, and would properly interface to all
drive types.
Dave, why not just write software for a catweasel card? I realize
that the catweasel's FPGA has been programmed with a bitmap made
from closed-source RTL, but is that a serious impedement? When the day
comes that the catweasel is no longer supported/sold,
it would be possible to at that point design another one.
Will it? Or will nobody bother as it's a tough job.
Will it be 100% compatible, or will we find that disks that were
created with this at-least partially proprietary system will be
"lost" if the system cannot be made to work? The catweasel
is here and real, and at $100, it is price
reasonably.
The $100 cost, and the fact that you have to order and wait for it,
means that a significant number of people won't bother (I haven't) -
something you can build in a few hours in your workshop at near-$0
cost will get done by more people. Is the cat software open-source, are the internal and
storage formats
fully documented - one big thing about the work that I have been
doing is to make sure that people in the future can access the data
from the images so that they can find "other means" of regenerating
the disk if necessary - even if that regenerated disk is just a
different format image for a simulator.
Yes, otherwise it wouldn't work with any formats. The whole point of
the catweasel is that 3rd parties write software for it to decode disk
formats.
Sure, not
everybody will
be able/willing to spend $100 for something like this, but that is
far less than the number of people who would be put off by having
to build their own hardware.
On this point I disagree - the board I am thinking of would be very
simple, perhaps a dozen DIP chips - easy to build. I think a lot of
the people on this list would gladly take an evening or two to build
one - also if it were to be done, printed circuit boards, and even
finished/tested boards could be made available at low cost (like the
cat), but unlike the cat, fully documented and you can build it
yourself if you like. It would not be "owned" or controlled by
anyone. The one thing
that I feel is missing from the catweasel is a 50-pin
header for connecting to standard 8" floppies.
A grave omission for something thats supposed to archive
non-PC-standard disks. Another minor
gripe is that each of the versions of the catweasel
(now four) tries to be register compatible with previous versions
while adding new functionality. It has lead to some arcane
programming requirements, which is sad: a very thin API to hide
version changes would have made things much simpler.
But would have tied the thing to one particular development
environment (Here's you VisualC++ library - have a nice day). The
best solution is a fully open and documented description of the
hardware and lots of sample code. Finally, is the
WD2793 able to read northstar horizon floppy disks?
If not, then a WD2793-based solution is not general enough.
As noted in the original message, it would be soft-sector only - the
idea is to make a simple/cheap alternative to the limitations of the
PC controller... Still deciding if it's worth it - I'll record
your "NO" vote.
Not to discourage you, but, I'd echo the sentiment above. I'd suggest
that if you do want to produce something, make something that can read
the disk on a flux-transition level, and store that sort of data.
Something nice and generic. That way, you can do all the processing in
software, and handle any format of disk that comes your way.
Pat
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