Did that quite some time ago - He's not allowed to tell... There's a bit of reverse engineered information on the web, but it does not seem complete - Writing to a disk and re-reading seems like the quickest and most reliable way to do it given that I didn't have THAT many to do. Having the filenames auto-entered, and the comments captured and transferred makes this approach reasonable to do. 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

I check that no detectable errors occured in both processes (writing and reading), that no sectors in the final image are flagged missing, and that the number of sectors/track in the resulting .IMD image is what I expect for the system in question (in case a complete sector was somehow "lost"). The chances of data corruption getting past the CRC checks seems to me to be somewhat lower than the chances of losing data do to misinterpreting an undocumented file format based on minimal reverse engineered notes which contain numerous instances of terms such as "unknown", "seems to" and "may mean" when referring to various fields in the image. The problem with data loss due to a flawed understanding of it's format is that such loss often goes undetected. -- 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

Ok - since it was requested, and it was something that I've had it in the back of my mind to do at some point, I spent a good chunk of the day fooling with Teledisk and poking at it's image files - I think I have finally figured out most of the missing pieces (such as how to encode/decode mixed density disks). I have posted a preliminary converter called TD02IMD which will convert .TD0 files directly to .IMD files without having to write them to a floppy (in fact Teledisk is not required at all). So far it's worked on all the .TD0 files I've thrown at it, and given exactly the same .IMD image content as when I read the disk with IMD (using IMDU's compare ability to confirm). I've also decided to change the way I make it available - instead of burying the converters away in a page that might be easily missed, I've simply included them in the ImageDisk distriubution. So if you want them, just grab the ImageDisk archive again, I've updated the documenation to include the converters as well. Let me know if you encounter any problems. 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

(blush) - thanks for the support Jim, it's good to know this stuff is being appreciated. Btw - I've been playing around with some Teledisk images that I have which are "bad" (can't recreate anything looking useful from them), and taking them apart I've found some interesting things. Most of the problems are related to: - If TD thinks it sees data on a track thats not a valid sector, it creates a fake sector to hold it (thats where those mysterious 100, 101 ... sectors come from) - In some cases, this causes the amount of data to exceed the track size and cannot be recreated. - I've found a few images where TD appears to have read tracks twice - generating a complete duplicated sector list - this is obviously way too much information for a physical track to contain. I've added some options to TD02IMD to help strip away some of this extra data and possibly allow the disks to be recreated - The updated program is posted (no doubt I will be making further discoveries, so you might want to check in again in a couple of weeks). It's been my experience that small jobs can often be completed by one person with insomnia before a group of people can decide how they would like to start. Thats just the way it is. Besides, I enjoy working on my half-baked ideas early in the morning before the daily din kicks in :-) In a related note, a bit of grumbling.... I've been somewhat disappointed that after posting the TESTFDC program and a request for list subscribers to help me characterize mainboards and floppy controllers (about 2 weeks ago), I have received exactly one submission of information - and even this was taken from an earlier posting, not by the use of my program, and was incomplete (FDC part numbers, but no information as to the mainboards or adapters which were actually tested) - but still very much appreciated. I've been able to test a few more boards, and added a few additional entries, however at this rate it will take a very long time before the resource is even remotely useful ... Although "what do I need to do single density" is one of the top questions I get asked, I can only conclude that this particularly half-baked idea is not seen as worthy of anyone else's effort... So I'm putting it on the back-burner. I'll leave what information I've collected up on the site and keep the TESTFDC program in the ImageDisk distribution as it does help people figure out if their system "can" or "can't". 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

Useful results include which boards/controllers don't work - If someone is trying to assemble a system to do imaging. knowing that the board he is considering doesn't work is the next best thing to knowing that it does (otherwise he has to acquire it and test it - and then dispose of it again if it does not). Knowing that SD can be read is useful - but TESTFDC can't check for this as it has to create the SD disk in the first place. I haven't actually run across one yet that can read but not write (although I may have and just don't know it). Regards, 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

Hi All I've been able to create a driver to output to a HP printer running PCL. One needs to be able to enter the Forth mode. There were a few application softwares for the Cat that have locked out the Forth access. I've not gotten to these yet to look at how to re-enable the Forth mode. Still, most only have the normal Cat without anything extra. This code should be fine there. There is quite a bit that one can do with the Cat and just the ROM that came with it. Normally the Cat only had drivers for Canon printers and the FX80 type printers ( that were copied by several dot printers of the time ). Since the printer did formatted printing, it required a driver specific to the printer. Since I didn't have a Canon printer and was happy with my HP, I was interrested in adding code that would drive my HP. The Cat has an interesting feature in that it copies the entire RAM to disk. This means that any code entered can be made to come back on each boot without any additional operations. The Cat is programmed in Forth. I figured that I could make the needed modification my self. That was several years ago when I first got the Cat. What I didn't realize was that I had no idea how to decompile the current code or what the various escape sequences meant to the Canon printers. The first big break was finding a couple of manuals at the Stanford Special collections library, left by Jef Rasken before he died. These gave me the needed information on both the Forth and quite a bit on the printer drivers. Understanding a few other bits and pieces came from one of the developers of the Cat ( Charlie Springer ). I never did find anything other than a Japanesse document on the LIPS codes used for the Canon Laser Beam printers. I did fine some for the FX80 and the Canon Bubble Jet. With this information I've been able to determine quite a bit about writing the driver for the HP. I realize that most people would never use any of the printer escape sequences but Canon should make them a little more available. Back on subject. I've created a driver that one can type in. I've not setup propotional spacing yet but it does handle most of the needed operations. I've not looked at any of the foreign character printing yet but as long as one stays with regular the character set, it should be fine. One can use it for its intended purpose ( editor, mail list, speadsheet or whatever ) or one can put their Forth code in and print is all out on a HP with my driver. I hope to get it posted on Bruce's DigiBarn Canon Cat page but until then, if anyone is interested, send an email to me. Dwight dkelvey at hot mail dot com PS I just saw another Cat on ebay. That make three I've seen in the last year or so. _________________________________________________________________ Exercise your brain! Try Flexicon. http://games.msn.com/en/flexicon/default.htm?icid=flexicon_hmemailtaglinema…