Subject: Re: Looking for an 8 bit FDC...
From: Dave Dunfield <dave04a at dunfield.com>
Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2005 23:28:30 -0400
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at
classiccmp.org>
Have you tried just using the diskette controller in a PC? - I've
found that almost all of my P1ish machines can read/write FM, and
I've used ImageDisk to backup and restore almost all of the soft-
sector formats that I have here (although some are better than others.
I've found that Intel mainboards work very well, although the ones
I have only support one drive select).
Again an older 486 and an AT (older) FDC is a hard solution to beat
for the majority.
Amazing how an relatively easy 80% solution covers 97% of the need. A
PC controller isn't a complete solution but for a huge amount of day
to day effort it's a usable solution. Those disks that cant be read
with that solution are already known. Those bad actors are either
hard sectord where each is likely a special case or sufficiently odd
enough to warrent keeping a sample system fully operational.
The alternate is some system that has a bus so you can insert
controllers to fit the oddball situations and just plug them in.
I use S100 for that, right now the only formats that crate can't handle
is the GCR formats (no systems here use it) and hard sector other than NS*
though I do have an Altair hard sector system.
The only problem that isn't solved however is they guy on the other
side of the planet with the only other oddball system like it and
needs a boot disk.
I've have had this problem since I put a NS* conttroller in my first
S100 system in '77. That problem is what I want is on brand Q media
and format and I have brand N that doesn't do that.
Allison