3 Aug
2016
3 Aug
'16
4:51 a.m.
I am trying to preserve data from a selection of 8inch disks and the only information I
have is some printouts which I believe to be HP CAT reports.
The first couple of lines are as follows
NAME PRO TYPE REC/FILE BYTES/REC ADDRESS
H8,0,1 148
ALT-A DATA 1 1188 0/1/0
Can anyone answer the following questions?
Is this an HP CAT report?
What does the H8,0,1 mean?
Is it likely that there are 1188 bytes/rec?
What does the address 0/1/0 resolve to?
Any information would be most welcome
Denise de Vries
________________________________
3 Aug
3 Aug
5:19 a.m.
Hi Denise,
It is a HP disc, probably for the hp 9845/35 series.
H tells you the drive type (9895A), 8 the controller select code, 0 the drive address, 1
the unit address (second disc in a unit, first disc will be 0).
Probably the disc will contain a large fata file of 1188 blocks, may be it?s a database
can?t say much more of it. To determine the data itself you need to know the first record
of the file,they will tell the kind of data in it.
-Rik
Van: Denise de Vries
1:26 p.m.
On Wed, Aug 3, 2016 at 3:19 AM, Rik Bos <hp-fix at xs4all.nl> wrote:
It is a HP disc, probably for the hp 9845/35 series.
H tells you the drive type (9895A), 8 the controller select code, 0 the drive address, 1
the unit address (second disc in a unit, first disc will be 0).
Probably the disc will contain a large fata file of 1188 blocks, may be it?s a database
can?t say much more of it. To determine the data itself you need to know the first record
of the file,they will tell the kind of data in it.
If it's a 9895A disk, and if it is double density, then the 9895A is
the only drive that can read the disk in the normal way, because HP
used their own unique M2FM format for that.
Of course, a flux-transition reader like Catweasel or DiscFerret can
be used to archive it, though AFAIK there's not yet any software that
understands 9895A format. The 9895A documentation doesn't give enough
detail on the format, so some reverse-engineering of the format
details would be needed to write suitable decoding software.
I'm currently working on a Python program to decode Intel M2FM format
(used for double density 8-inch with SBC-202 controller on MDS 800,
Series II, Series III) from flux transition data. The Intel M2FM
format is reasonably well documented.
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denise.devries＠flinders.edu.au -
hp-fix＠xs4all.nl -
spacewar＠gmail.com