19 Mar
2007
19 Mar
'07
1:56 p.m.
When doing your testing, remember to separate the
non-FM capable
controllers from the FM-capable-but-not-at 300K ones. Don Maslin and
I did start doing a fairly exhaustive survey of LSI single-function
diskette controllers to see what could handle FM and 128-byte
sectored MFM, but that was long ago, and we didn't include the very
new multi-I/O chips.
Do you still have the data you collected. This could be useful.
'
Maybe it's time for a new census, although I
wonder--many systems
made since about 1995 won't support more than a single floppy anyway--
and I suspect that floppyless desktop PCs aren't that far off from
becoming the rule (many are still shipped with a 34-pin header on the
mobo just in case, but that won't stay around, I suspect).
I think it is, and I plan to write some tools to make it fairly easy for
people to test these capabilities.
Modern machines are rapidly getting to the point where they will not
be useful for diskette imaging, however knowing what old machines to
look for is equally valuable - P1 class and earlier machines can be
had for "Free" - but who wants to collect a big pile of boxes and
take the time to scrounge up memory, drives misc other bits, and
get it running only to test it and find it's yet another brain-dead FDC.
If you know what to be looking for it could save a a lot fo time...
Dave
--
dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield
dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com
com Collector of vintage computing equipment:
http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html