I've been working away at my ImageDisk utility, and have made a number
of fixes, including some corrections to the sides/stepping detect logic
which failed to properly detect some mixed density disks.
I have added several new features, including improvements to the
"Align/Test" function, and the ability to translate the data rates
(This lets you do things like recreate DD disks read on DD drives on HD
drives and vice-versa).
This evening I finally wired up a cable to connect a double-sided 8"
drive to my PC, and was very pleased to see that I was able to backup and
restore several mixed density 8" disks with no problems - even a double
backup and restore (backup of backup then restore) still matched the
original and booted correctly.
I have also created a first cut at my "Analyze/Merge" utility, this is
a companion utility which:
- Provides a detailed report of the track/sector layout and data formats
occuring in the diskette image.
- Can perform a logical sector by sector compare of two disk images, even
if the binary layout is not exactly the same (usually due to different
comment or problems detecting interleave).
- Can merge two images into one, allowing you to take advantage of the fact
that some PC's may read different sectors than others (one of my machines
refuses to read the first sector on Cromemco disks while a second machine
fails to read the last sector) - and create a complete image by merging
them.
It's late and I'm going to bed - in the morning, I will transmit the updated
software to the people who already requested and received the first version (If
you don't want to receive any more updates, please let me know). If anyone else
wants to join in the fun, please drop me a line and I'll add you to my list.
Regards,
Dave
--
dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield
dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools:
www.dunfield.com
com Collector of vintage computing equipment:
http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html