17 Jul
2003
17 Jul
'03
7:04 a.m.
Hi,
I'm new to the list and am currently trying to find a solution to
transfering data/software from 8-inch disks to a pc.
We have a working minc-II with two floppy drives. The console is gone
but I currently have an old 386 hooked up to act as a terminal.
What would be the best way to transfer the info from the old disks to the
'newer' pc?
One suggestion was to get an old 8-inch floppy drive and hook it directly
to the pc, but it seems to me that would involve possible building a
hardware interface and writing driver software.
Any suggestions or pointers to web pages would be very welcome, I've
already spent a few hours searching the web without finding a solution.
Thanks!
Jo
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17 Jul
17 Jul
7:59 a.m.
On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, Jo Cooley wrote:
Hi,
I'm new to the list and am currently trying to find a solution to
transfering data/software from 8-inch disks to a pc.
We have a working minc-II with two floppy drives. The console is gone
but I currently have an old 386 hooked up to act as a terminal.
What would be the best way to transfer the info from the old disks to the
'newer' pc?
You've already GOT it. Tell the minc to display the file on the console.
Tell the 386 to save it to disk. For non-text files, write a utility ON
THE MINC to take each byte, and display the numerical value of the byte.
Write the reverse for the PC.
One suggestion was to get an old 8-inch floppy drive
and hook it directly
to the pc, but it seems to me that would involve possible building a
hardware interface and writing driver software.
DONE.
the 1.2M controller in the PC will operate MOST (those wishing to list
obscure exceptions,...) 8" "industry standard" drives, probably including
ones borrowed from the minc.
But,...
ARE YOU WILLING TO WRITE a complete file system handler to read and parse
the directory structure an fetch the individual sectors of the files?
Any suggestions or pointers to web pages would be very
welcome, I've
already spent a few hours searching the web without finding a solution.
--
Fred Cisin cisin(a)xenosoft.com
XenoSoft http://www.xenosoft.com
PO Box 1236 (510) 558-9366
Berkeley, CA 94701-1236
10 p.m.
--- Fred Cisin <cisin(a)xenosoft.com> wrote:
On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, Jo Cooley wrote:
> Hi,
> I'm new to the list and am currently trying to find a solution to
> transfering data/software from 8-inch disks to a pc.
> We have a working minc-II with two floppy drives...
> One suggestion was to get an old 8-inch floppy drive and hook it
> directly to the pc...
DONE.
the 1.2M controller in the PC will operate MOST (those wishing to list
obscure exceptions,...) 8" "industry standard" drives, probably including
ones borrowed from the minc.
Umm... Fred, what you may not know is that a MINC-11 comes with an RX02
floppy drive - definitely not "industry standard" (unless your industry
is DEC ;-)
Personally, I'd go with the ASCII console as the easiest path.
-ethan
18 Jul
18 Jul
7:24 a.m.
On Tue, 15 Jul
2003, Jo Cooley wrote:
> Hi,
> I'm new to the list and am currently trying to find a solution to
> transfering data/software from 8-inch disks to a pc.
> We have a working minc-II with two floppy drives...
> One suggestion was to get an old 8-inch floppy drive and hook it
> directly to the pc...
--- Fred Cisin <cisin(a)xenosoft.com> wrote:
> DONE.
> the 1.2M controller in the PC will operate MOST (those wishing to list
> obscure exceptions,...) 8" "industry standard" drives, probably
including
> ones borrowed from the minc. Umm... Fred, what you may not know is that a MINC-11
comes with an RX02
floppy drive - definitely not "industry standard" (unless your industry
is DEC ;-)
You are right, I did NOT know that the Minc used RX02. That was why I had
said "probably".
But I was mostly responding to the "all I have to do is get a drive
connected", and trying to get across the concept that connecting the drive
was trivial, and that it was NOT a matter of a simple device driver, but
writing a file system handler.
Personally, I'd go with the ASCII console as the
easiest path.
I completely agree, particularly since he already has that connected and
working.
23 Jul
23 Jul
3:03 p.m.
Subject: Re: 8-inch disk drives
--- Fred Cisin <cisin(a)xenosoft.com> wrote:
DONE.
the 1.2M controller in the PC will operate MOST (those wishing to list
obscure exceptions,...) 8" "industry standard" drives, probably including
ones borrowed from the minc.
Being rather new (3-4 days) to this list, I dont know if what I am going to say now, has
been discussed before. If so, please forgive me.
There seems to be a lot of discussions regarding handling old / odd floppy disk formats.
What Fred said above is a truth with severe limitations. It is my experience, that modern
floppy controllers, and _especially_ those embedded on motherboards, will not read
anything other then 3.5" disks (720K, 1.44M and 2.88M) and 5.25" (360K, 1.2M).
The older formats, like 5.25" 320K, not to speak of 160K are not supported, or should
I say are not supported on the systems I've delivered for the last 8-10 years.
Please note that I only take MS-DOs formats in consideration. Anything other, like CP/M or
8" disks, is totally out.
There was a mention of MicroSolutions UniForm software. The software (at least the version
I had) was able to read (some) CP/M formats by doing nasty things to the parameters in the
floppy controller. When I tried it again some years ago, it was a total flop, probably
because of the limitations as described above.
So, what is the solution if you have some disks which are non-MS-DOS or MS-DOS with
strange capacities? The first thing that comes to mind, is to get an old ISA card with
floppy controller. There are many "super I/O" controllers to be found which
support hard disk (maybe even up to 500 megs! ) floppies, printer and 2 COM ports. Those
cards can normally be strapped, so only the floppy part is active. When you _then_ try
with UniForm, you might succeed.
The second thing you could do, is to save an old 386 from the scrapheap just for this
purpose. Or maybe even a museum piece: the IBM AT. In other words : the older the better.
Nico
3:35 p.m.
DONE.
the 1.2M controller in the PC will operate MOST (those wishing to list
obscure exceptions,...) 8" "industry standard" drives, probably including
ones borrowed from the minc.
There seems to be a lot of discussions regarding
handling old / odd
floppy disk formats. What Fred said above is a truth with severe
limitations. It is my experience, that modern floppy controllers, and
_especially_ those embedded on motherboards, will not read anything
other then 3.5" disks (720K, 1.44M and 2.88M) and 5.25" (360K, 1.2M).
The older formats, like 5.25" 320K, not to speak of 160K are not
supported, or should I say are not supported on the systems I've
delivered for the last 8-10 years. Please note that I only take MS-DOs
formats in consideration. Anything other, like CP/M or 8" disks, is
totally out.
IF your hardware supports 360K, then your HARDWARE supports 320K and 160K.
Any other problems you had were with your software.
With proper cabling and jumpering of the drive, the controller doesn't
know the difference between a 1.2M 5.25" and an 8" DSDD drive. (That is
what the 5.25" 1.2M was originally INTENDED for!)
There was a mention of MicroSolutions UniForm
software. The software (at
least the version I had) was able to read (some) CP/M formats by doing
nasty things to the parameters in the floppy controller. When I tried it
hardly
"nasty". They were fully documented settings to the table pointed
at by INT 1Eh. Fun stuff.
again some years ago, it was a total flop, probably
because of the
limitations as described above.
WHAT limitations?????
Are you having hardware problems, or software problems?
So, what is the solution if you have some disks which
are non-MS-DOS or
MS-DOS with strange capacities? The first thing that comes to mind, is
to get an old ISA card with floppy controller. There are many "super
I/O" controllers to be found which support hard disk (maybe even up to
500 megs! ) floppies, printer and 2 COM ports. Those cards can normally
be strapped, so only the floppy part is active. When you _then_ try with
UniForm, you might succeed.
Be aware, that NT (including Win2K and XP) will try very hard to keep you
from doing direct sector access. Other that THAT,
neither the hardware
nor OS (DOS,Win9x,ME) will interfere with Uniform, XenioCopy,
MediaMaster, etc.
The second thing you could do, is to save an old 386
from the scrapheap
just for this purpose. Or maybe even a museum piece: the IBM AT. In
other words : the older the better.
YES! But if it is lower density, such as 5.25" 360K, 720K, go with an XT.
Your overall chances of success are much better with the older equipment,
and using DOS instead of some of the new crap.
6:35 p.m.
There seems to be a lot of discussions regarding
handling old / odd
floppy disk formats. What Fred said above is a truth with severe
limitations. It is my experience, that modern floppy controllers, and
_especially_ those embedded on motherboards, will
not read anything other then 3.5" disks (720K, 1.44M and 2.88M) and
5.25" (360K, 1.2M).
The older formats, like 5.25" 320K, not to speak of 160K are not
I am wonderign how on earth you can make a disk controller (note, not the
OS driver software, the physocal controller) that works correctly with a
9-sector-per-track format, but fails with the 8 sector-per-track version,
all other parameters being the same. Because that's the only difference
between the 320K and 360K MS-DOS formats.
Similarly, I can't understand how you can make a controller that works
correcty with a DS disk but fails with the SS version.
supported, or should I say are not supported on the
systems I've
delivered for the last 8-10 years.
Please note that I only take MS-DOs formats in consideration. Anything
other, like CP/M or 8" disks, is totally out.
Err, considering that the 8" drive and the 1.2M 5.25" drive are very
similar at the hardware interface level, it would be difficult to make a
contorller that worked with one but which fails with the other.
And some CP/M formats are pnysically almost identical to the standard
320K MS-DOS format. Hardware that can read one can also read the other.
There was a mention of MicroSolutions UniForm software. The software
(at least the version I had) was able to read (some) CP/M formats by
doing nasty things to the parameters in the floppy controller. When I
tried it again some years ago, it was a total flop, probably because of
the limitations as described above.
The main problem is that many PC disk controllers (going back to the
original IBM card in the PC and PC/XT -- check the schematics) can't
handle single density (FM) recording correctly.
scrapheap just for this purpose. Or maybe even a
museum piece: the IBM
AT. In other words : the older the better.
I happen to be typing this on a much-hacked PC/AT (orignal IBM, original
motherboard with my own hardware mods, etc). Still works fine, and I have
no intention of downgrading to a more modern machine.
-tony
8:56 p.m.
Tony wrote
I am wondering how on earth you can make a disk
controller (note, not the
OS driver software, the physical controller) that works correctly with a
9-sector-per-track format, but fails with the 8 sector-per-track version,
all other parameters being the same. Because that's the only difference
between the 320K and 360K MS-DOS formats.
Only if you were to make an "intelligent"* controller that was designed to
work as a sort of co-processor with less interaction with the main system.
Similarly, I can't understand how you can make a controller that works
correcty with a DS disk but fails with the SS version.
as above.
However, the FDCs on even the most recent PC motherboards are fully
compatible (well almost, they may be slightly extended) with the original
Intel chip ... as can be shown by running older software on those
motherboards.
* whether this is or is not more "intelligent" from the end-users' PoV
depends entirely on whether said end-user needs the flexibility of a
main-cpu-controlled preipheral. There seem to be few complaints about such
high-level interfaces in (for example) Ethernat cards.
Andy
24 Jul
24 Jul
12:24 p.m.
Tony wrote
OK... I'll bet that no normal PC motherboard uses such a controller,
though...
I have found PC disk controllers that can't handle 360K disks. When used
in 1.2M (360rpm drives), such disks have an effective 300kbps data rate,
which the (broken-as-designed) controller didn't handle. I complained
about this, only to be told that 'nobody uses 360K disks any more'.
Hmmm... It claimed to be 'IBM compatible', and the IBM controller
certainly handles 360K disks...
-tony
I am wondering how on earth you can make a disk
controller (note, not the
OS driver software, the physical controller) that works correctly with a
9-sector-per-track format, but fails with the 8 sector-per-track version,
all other parameters being the same. Because that's the only difference
between the 320K and 360K MS-DOS formats.
Only if you were to make an "intelligent"* controller that was designed to
work as a sort of co-processor with less interaction with the main system.
22 Jul
22 Jul
2:34 p.m.
From: "Fred Cisin" <cisin(a)xenosoft.com>
To: <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2003 6:39 PM
Subject: [Spam][95.7%] Re: 8-inch disk drives
On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, Jo Cooley wrote:
Hi,
I'm new to the list and am currently trying to find a solution to
transfering data/software from 8-inch disks to a pc.
We have a working minc-II with two floppy drives. The console is gone
but I currently have an old 386 hooked up to act as a terminal.
What would be the best way to transfer the info from the old disks to the
'newer' pc?
One suggestion was to get an old 8-inch floppy drive and hook it directly
to the pc, but it seems to me that would involve possible building a
hardware interface and writing driver software.
Any suggestions or pointers to web pages would be very welcome, I've
already spent a few hours searching the web without finding a solution.
That depends on if you want to tinker yourself or want someone to do it.
I have used a MicroSolutions floppy controller for a project, where I had to be able to
read each and every sector (128 bytes up to 1024 bytes) from an 8" disk (SSSD to
DSDD).
It was suggested, that you could use PC controllers for 1.2 meg disks for the job, but
this is not the case, as they will only recognize 512 byte sectors and only DOS file
systems.
You can do a Google search on "media conversion", which gives many hits.
You could also take a look at www.farumdata.dk/enindex.htm if you want to explore the
possibilities i can offer in our servicebureau.
Who many disks are we talking about ?
Nico
21 Jul
21 Jul
10:54 a.m.
On Mon, 21 Jul 2003, Nico de Jong wrote:
From: "Fred Cisin"
<cisin(a)xenosoft.com>
To: <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2003 6:39 PM
Subject: [Spam][95.7%] Re: 8-inch disk drives
I RESPONDED.
Please be careful with attribution.
That depends on if you want to tinker yourself or want
someone to do it.
It didnb't sound like the original poster had the requisite understanding
to be able to write a file system handler.
I have used a MicroSolutions floppy controller for a
project, where I had to be able to read each and every sector (128 bytes up to 1024 bytes)
from an 8" disk (SSSD to DSDD).
It was suggested, that you could use PC controllers for 1.2 meg disks for the job, but
this is not the case, as they will only recognize 512 byte sectors and only DOS file
systems.
The MicrosSolutions Floppy controller (Compaticard) IS an 8bit ISA PC 1.2M
controller.
THE ONLY difference is SOFTWARE!
The Microsolutions floppy controller (Compaticard) is my favorite, but it
is nothing magical. It ALSO will "only recognize 512 byte sectors and
only DOS file systems". What is needed is SOFTWARE! And "Uniform" (the
software package from MicroSolutions) does NOT do Minc.
(Nor does Xenocopy - but he already has a working serial connection up and
running!)
You can do a Google search on "media
conversion", which gives many hits.
I've been there, done that, supported
more formats than anybody else.
You could also take a look at
www.farumdata.dk/enindex.htm if you want to explore the possibilities i can offer in our
servicebureau.
Who many disks are we talking about ?
A service bureau, such as yours, would
certainly be the best option if he
can't figure out how to do it with his existing serial connection.
--
Fred Cisin cisin(a)xenosoft.com
XenoSoft http://www.xenosoft.com
PO Box 1236 (510) 558-9366
Berkeley, CA 94701-1236
23 Jul
23 Jul
3:03 p.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Fred Cisin" <cisin(a)xenosoft.com>
To: <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Cc: <cctech(a)classiccmp.org>
The MicrosSolutions Floppy controller (Compaticard) IS
an 8bit ISA PC 1.2M
controller.
THE ONLY difference is SOFTWARE!
It ALSO will "only recognize 512 byte sectors and
only DOS file systems".
--
This is definitely not true.
I've read and written IBM 3740 SSSD disks, and read DSDD (1024 bytes)
And "Uniform" (the
software package from MicroSolutions) does NOT do
Minc.
---
Correct. It is mostly CP/M AFAIR
Nico
6:35 p.m.
> The MicrosSolutions Floppy controller
(Compaticard) IS an 8bit ISA PC 1.2M
> controller.
> THE ONLY difference is SOFTWARE!
> It ALSO will "only recognize 512 byte sectors and
> only DOS file systems".
On Wed, 23 Jul 2003, Nico de Jong wrote:
This is definitely not true.
I've read and written IBM 3740 SSSD disks, and read DSDD (1024 bytes)
THAT is
why it was in quotes. Because it was a SOFTWARE problem, being
presented as a hardware one. Neither the MicroSolutions, nor generic PC
floppy controllers can do anything special without special software, and
neither are limited to "512 bytes and only DOS file systems" except as an
issue of software.
And "Uniform" (the
The MicroSolutions floppy controller (Compaticard) is a very nice one, but
it won't help with Minc any more than a generic controller.
software package from MicroSolutions) does NOT do
Minc.
---
Correct. It is mostly CP/M AFAIR 
26 Jul
26 Jul
3:26 p.m.
On Wed, 23 Jul 2003 17:15:17 -0700 (PDT), Fred Cisin wrote:
That's right and therefore I have some questions.
I took a look onto a MINC on a german webside and see that the minc is
an interesting part.
1. Dos the minc us rt-11 as his os?
2. How is the data orgnized on the disk ?
3. Is the MINC disk readable onto another dec pdp-11 or similiar ? If
yes isn't it better to try this first?
Greetings from
Fritz Chwolka
<collecting old computers just for fun>
> The
MicrosSolutions Floppy controller (Compaticard) IS an 8bit ISA PC 1.2M
> controller.
> THE ONLY difference is SOFTWARE!
> It ALSO will "only recognize 512 byte sectors and
> only DOS file systems".
The MicroSolutions floppy controller (Compaticard) is a very nice one, but
it won't help with Minc any more than a generic controller. 
28 Jul
28 Jul
5:43 a.m.
New subject: Tatung Einstein 256
I have a Einstein 256 without monitor. In this computer PSU is integrated into the
monitor.
Somebody know pinout connections for power and video?
Regards.
7639
days inactive
7650
days old
14 comments
8 participants
participants (8)
-
andyh＠andyh-rayleigh.freeserve.co.uk -
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
cisin＠xenosoft.com -
erd_6502＠yahoo.com -
fritz_aus_dem_hause_chwolka＠t-online.de -
lgomez＠cdromsa.es -
luv2craftca＠jaydemail.com -
nico＠farumdata.dk