Hi I've gathered a bunch of information for the Cat and expect to get this put up on Bruce's DigiBarn page. It is a bit much for a post and is better on a web page. The one thing I was looking for, the ability to reconfigure printer esc sequences, I found. One could, using this information, configure the Cat for most any printer. I've not tried it yet. My HP 3si has a bad supply but I hope to get things running again soon so I can test things out. It does look relatively straight forward to change the strings. I've left my email address with the seller of the Canon Cat so I hope the buyer contacts me. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ The MSN Entertainment Guide to Golden Globes is here. Get all the scoop. http://tv.msn.com/tv/globes2007/

On Mon, December 25, 2006 23:36, Chris M wrote: Of course. I just hope I earn enough $$$$ to get me a Lisa 1 before the price rockets so out of proportion I don't have to mortgage 2 or 3 houses to get it. Naturally by that time it'll be so degraded there's not much chance that it will still be working but hey, I've been after one since 1983..... -- adrian/witchy Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UKs biggest home computer collection?

Hi All Talking to another that is using the Cat's, the disk drives seem to fail often. As I look into it, I see that the interface doesn't look like your normal interface. It has a 20 pin ribbon cable and that includes 12v and 5v lines in this same cable. The drive has the Canon part number MD 3301. A quick search on the web doesn't show anything. I'm not even sure of the drive size. I think it is a 730K but not sure. Does anyone have any information on this drive?? Thanks Dwight _________________________________________________________________ The MSN Entertainment Guide to Golden Globes is here. Get all the scoop. http://tv.msn.com/tv/globes2007/

This is a very common (!) MSX drive. Info in www.msxpro.com or better in http://www.msxpro.com/fdd24.html Also, you can find something in english in www.hansotten.com , lemmesee if I can find the right doc... http://www.hansotten.com/msxhw.html in the section "floppy drives"

On 26 Dec 2006 at 12:09, dwight elvey wrote: I suspect that the circuit is nothing more than a way to provide enough current to sink the MSX pullups. Many 3.5" drives are rated for 1K pullups and perhaps don't have the current drive capability. The other explanation is that he wanted to jumper drive select* to ready* and had extra gates left over. A better solution to the ready* problem would be to add a circuit that derives it from the index* pulse. Aren't just about all 1.44MB drives 720K-compatible? You may have to tape over the aperture on a 1.44MB floppy to get it to work, but I've yet to see a drive (outside of the NEC 1.3MB 360 RPM 3.5" ones) that doesn't speak 720K. Cheers, Chuck

On 26 Dec 2006 at 22:15, dwight elvey wrote: It depends on the disk driver. Some drivers may decide to proceed on READY present and hang if there's READY without a disk in the drive. BTW, this is why the 765 on the PC has a software reset line--since the drives don't have a READY status, the 765 will hang if no index pulses are there. But if your driver doesn't put a deadman timer on the chip operations, your system could sit waiting for a diskette forever. The drives used on the PS/2 don't use the window in the diskette jacket to switch denisty, but rather the host signal on pin 2. But there, all it takes is jumpering the pin correctly to do 720K. Most other drives use the window to specify density. Cheers, Chuck

dwight elvey wrote: It's not FM. The format commonly referred to as 720K is MFM (double density), but at half the data rate of the HD format (which is also MFM), and that's why the write currents are different and the disks are different coercivities. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

On 27 Dec 2006 at 11:11, dwight elvey wrote: You can use 1.44Ms as 720Ks because they're far closer in coercivity than 360Ks and 1.2Ms. However, it makes sense to cover over the HD sensing hole in 1.44Ms before using them, as you never know when you'll try to read them in a drive capable of 1.44M which senses the hole. Don't try to use a 1.44M drive in HD mode to record 720K--it won't work reliably--I believe there's some high-pass filtering involved in auto-sensing drives that will get in the way. To illustrate this, try this experiment: Cover over the density-sensing hole on a 1.44M and format it up as 720K in an auto-sensing 1.44MB drive on a PC-- write some files to it. Now, remove the density sense cover and try to read it. It won't read reliably. The PC is unaware of the density hole--it's essentially blind to what density the drive thinks the diskette is. I have seen early operating systems that use the ready/not ready transition to discover diskette changes, but these have mostly been on 8" drives. On 5.25" drives, I've written drivers that poll a drive (with motor on or off) to sense the write-protect status change as a diskette is inserted or removed. This was tied into a scan of the open file table to flash a display message that essentially said "Put that back!". Not quite up to a locking door latch or auto eject drives, but it worked very well. Cheers, Chuck

On Tue, December 26, 2006 01:52, Chandra Bajpai wrote: Sweet! My only hope these days is that someone finds one in their attic/basement/shed/garage and decides to donate it to my museum rather than stick it on epay.... Aaah, christmas dreams :) -- adrian/witchy Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UKs biggest home computer collection?