18 Feb
2010
18 Feb
'10
1:47 p.m.
http://www.deviceside.com/
talked to this guy at VCF years ago.
18 Feb
18 Feb
2:25 p.m.
--- On Thu, 2/18/10, Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> wrote:
http://www.deviceside.com/
talked to this guy at VCF years ago.
Now this is quite cool. And he even cleverly priced the device at $55.25...
Now, I wonder how long until he has *writing* to disks supported?
-Ian
2:56 p.m.
On Feb 18, 2010, at 2:25 PM, Mr Ian Primus wrote:
Me too. I'd have ordered one right now if it could write.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
http://www.deviceside.com/
talked to this guy at VCF years ago.
Now this is quite cool. And he even cleverly priced the device at
$55.25...
Now, I wonder how long until he has *writing* to disks supported? 
3 p.m.
On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 1:56 PM, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
On Feb 18, 2010, at 2:25 PM, Mr Ian Primus wrote:
I have a catweasel and it still can't write to apple 2e floppy disks.
Hopefully, this one will get write support shortly.
brian
http://www.deviceside.com/
Me too. I'd have ordered one right now if it could write.
-Dave
talked to this guy at VCF years ago.
Now this is quite cool. And he even cleverly priced the device at
$55.25...
Now, I wonder how long until he has *writing* to disks supported?
3:49 p.m.
On Thu, 18 Feb 2010, Brian Lanning wrote:
On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 1:56 PM, Dave McGuire
<mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
I'm rather disappointed with my catweasel. The hardware is very nifty and
full of promise, but drive support is terrible. I wonder what prevents
the deviceside gizmo from writing to disks. If that could be added and
then extend the thing to handle 3.5" and 8" disks, then I'd be very happy.
--
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
On Feb 18, 2010, at 2:25 PM, Mr Ian Primus
wrote:
I have a catweasel and it still can't write to apple 2e floppy disks.
Hopefully, this one will get write support shortly. http://www.deviceside.com/
Me too. I'd have ordered one right now if it could write.
talked to this guy at VCF years ago.
Now this is quite cool. And he even cleverly priced the device at
$55.25...
Now, I wonder how long until he has *writing* to disks supported?
3:58 p.m.
On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 2:49 PM, David Griffith <dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu>wrote:
I'm rather disappointed with my catweasel. The
hardware is very nifty and
full of promise, but drive support is terrible. I wonder what prevents the
deviceside gizmo from writing to disks. If that could be added and then
extend the thing to handle 3.5" and 8" disks, then I'd be very happy.
Jens has a habit of outsourcing the software production to other people.
Someone else wrote the software that gets distributed with the catweasel. I
agree that it's terrible. I asked him whether the source code was
available, but apparently it's not. He says that adding read/write support
for a new device is easy, yet it never happens.
I believe someone has software for linux that support the catweasel. In
that case, it would be open source, but I haven't had the time to look into
it.
brian
4:18 p.m.
On 18 Feb 2010 at 14:58, Brian Lanning wrote:
On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 2:49 PM, David Griffith
<dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu>wrote:
> I'm rather disappointed with my catweasel. The hardware is very
> nifty and full of promise, but drive support is terrible. I wonder
> what prevents the deviceside gizmo from writing to disks. If that
> could be added and then extend the thing to handle 3.5" and 8"
> disks, then I'd be very happy.
The big problem that I see with this deviceside widget is that it has
limited current drive capability. 8" drives use 150 ohm pullups in
their terminators and present a 1 TTL UL. That's asking a lot from
a little uC. I'm also not sure how well the device handles the
higher densities.
Jens has a habit of outsourcing the software
production to other
people. Someone else wrote the software that gets distributed with the
catweasel. I agree that it's terrible. I asked him whether the
source code was available, but apparently it's not. He says that
adding read/write support for a new device is easy, yet it never
happens.
I still prefer the simplicity of the CW MK 1 run under DOS. Fully
documented and easy to program. Can be made to handle just about
anything. When you get to the MK3 and MK4, there has to be provision
made in hardware for running on multi-tasking OSes--the CPU can't
always be right there to interact with the card.
There's no reason that the CW couldn't handle both reading and
writting Apple IIe floppies, but Jens comes right out and says that
he doesn't write software for these things. So you're depending on
the kindness of strangers. The disk encoding format is well-
documented in "Understanding the Apple IIe". It's not rocket
science. I still have a Microsolutions Matchpoint PC card around
here somewhere and it's scarcely more than a dozen SSI TTL packages.
--Chuck
7:30 p.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
The big problem that I see with this deviceside widget
is that it has
limited current drive capability. 8" drives use 150 ohm pullups in
their terminators and present a 1 TTL UL. That's asking a lot from
a little uC.
It seems a lot of folks are falling into the same bear-trap. The SPS
(www.softpres.org) "Kryoflux" analyser is based on an Atmel ARM micro,
but they're direct-driving the disc drive from the MCU I/Os. This sort
of "design" makes me cringe...
I'm using TI and Fairchild line driver chips -- 74LVX14 and 74LVC07.
24mA output drive, series-resistor overcurrent protection (and the
option of fitting transient suppressors as well). They're TSSOP, but the
PCB solder-mask makes them fairly easy to replace with a Stanley knife
and a cheap 25W soldering iron.
Also, what's the issue with "Flippy" disks? Why can't you just reverse
the data in the buffer to account for the reversed disc rotation?
I'm also not sure how well the device handles the
higher densities.
That would depend on what method it's using to acquire data, and what
the acquisition clock rate is.
Feed it a Copylock-protected floppy from an Amiga or an Atari ST and
it's just about guaranteed to fall over. That said, most Amiga and ST
discs were 3.5-inch...
I still prefer the simplicity of the CW MK 1 run under
DOS. Fully
documented and easy to program. Can be made to handle just about
anything.
Hm, as I understood it, you couldn't handle hard-sectored discs with the
Mk1?
Although IIRC it doesn't have any onboard memory either -- your sample
length is limited by how much base memory you can grab (which would be
somewhere in the region of 64k per segment for plain DOS, or a few
GBytes for DOS+DPMI).
The advantage to raw DOS is that (even in CWSDPMI or DOS4GW) you can
take over every part of the machine. "Write this value to port 0x378!"
"Yes sir!". You just don't have that level of control when you're
running a multitasking OS.
There's no reason that the CW couldn't handle
both reading and
writting Apple IIe floppies, but Jens comes right out and says that
he doesn't write software for these things.
"Look, it's a shiny box that doesn't do anything!"
This is the one situation I don't want to get into with the DiscFerret;
I'm holding back on the hardware because the software is utter cack.
That said, the access API (libdiscferret, aka DiscAPI) is stable and
could "in theory" be extended to permit use with the Catweasel, if one
were so inclined. All by design, too :)
So you're depending on
the kindness of strangers. The disk encoding format is well-
documented in "Understanding the Apple IIe". It's not rocket
science.
It would take some effort to write a "good" GCR encoder/decoder. I'm
having one hell of a time just getting my FM/MFM decoder to behave
itself. For some reason, old Acorn DFS format floppies (FM, 250kbps)
don't read very well in any drive.
--
Phil.
classiccmp at philpem.me.uk
http://www.philpem.me.uk/
8:47 p.m.
On 19 Feb 2010 at 0:30, Philip Pemberton wrote:
I'm using TI and Fairchild line driver chips --
74LVX14 and 74LVC07.
24mA output drive, series-resistor overcurrent protection (and the
option of fitting transient suppressors as well). They're TSSOP, but
the PCB solder-mask makes them fairly easy to replace with a Stanley
knife and a cheap 25W soldering iron.
Same here, except I'm using a 5v AVR, so it's bog-standard 7407 and
74LS14 DIPs.
Also, what's the issue with "Flippy"
disks? Why can't you just reverse
the data in the buffer to account for the reversed disc rotation?
I suspect it's because the head for side 1 is offset from the side 0
head on a double-sided drive--and the offset doesn't translate to a
track width.
Hm, as I understood it, you couldn't handle
hard-sectored discs with
the Mk1?
Not true--the MK I does have a real-time index status, which works
fine for DOS where the CPU isn't doing anything else and you can wait
for the status change and jump on it. I've done plenty of HS
floppies with a MK I.
Although IIRC it doesn't have any onboard memory
either -- your sample
length is limited by how much base memory you can grab (which would be
somewhere in the region of 64k per segment for plain DOS, or a few
GBytes for DOS+DPMI).
The MK I has 128K of SRAM for its sample buffer.
It would take some effort to write a "good"
GCR encoder/decoder. I'm
having one hell of a time just getting my FM/MFM decoder to behave
itself. For some reason, old Acorn DFS format floppies (FM, 250kbps)
don't read very well in any drive.
I routinely use the MK I to read Brother 3.5" 240K WP floppies and
have used it to read Future Data 8" HS floppies that are also GCR.
There are one or two 5.25" 100 tpi GCR formats that require that the
low-pass filter on the drive electronics have its headroom raised a
bit.
I'm probably going to put the current design (uses two AVRs--one
(ATTiny2313) to handle drive seek, status testing, etc. and one
(ATMega162) to actually do the reading and writing) aside for now.
It was mostly because I needed a few more I/Os using the DIP AVR
packages, but it's turned out very nice. The two communicate via
UART. Output of the gizmo is RS-232; if USB is desired, it's easy
enough to use a cheap converter. Data transfer to the host is plain
old XMODEM.
I'd like to start next on a serial-interface Pertec tape controller.
There doesn't seem to be much out there other than some old ISA
cards and the odd Pertec-to-SCSI controller. Still plenty of Pertec-
interface tape drives, however.
--Chuck
7:08 p.m.
Brian Lanning wrote:
I believe someone has software for linux that support
the catweasel. In
that case, it would be open source, but I haven't had the time to look into
it.
It sounds like you're talking about cwfloppy:
http://www.soundtracker.org/raw/cwfloppy/index.html
No write support if you're running Kernel 2.6, though -- so basically
you have to put the CW in a machine running a pretty old (ca. 2004 or
so) Linux distro...
All I'll say is good luck to you if you're going to try that.
--
Phil.
classiccmp at philpem.me.uk
http://www.philpem.me.uk/
5:53 p.m.
Just ordered one now, will let you know when I get it, how it works out.
Curt
Al Kossow wrote:
http://www.deviceside.com/
talked to this guy at VCF years ago.
6:15 p.m.
On Thu, 18 Feb 2010, Al Kossow wrote:
http://www.deviceside.com/
talked to this guy at VCF years ago.
Cool! Just ordered one.
--
5340
days inactive
5340
days old
11 comments
9 participants
participants (9)
-
aek＠bitsavers.org -
brianlanning＠gmail.com -
cclist＠sydex.com -
classiccmp＠philpem.me.uk -
curt＠atarimuseum.com -
dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu -
ian_primus＠yahoo.com -
mcguire＠neurotica.com -
snhirsch＠gmail.com