Applesauce FDC

[David Williams]

On 2021-11-01 16:35, Hagstrom, Paul <hagstrom at bu.edu> wrote: > > There's a new Discord server that John started up for discussion and Q&A about the device and software, that might be the best place for quick answers The Discord invite is: > > https://discord.gg/YrQKdwNhdR > > (The link is also available in the upper right corner of https://applesaucefdc.com ) Ah never checked in the Contact section of the site so didn't see the discord. Guess it is time to learn about this new fangled discord thingy, seems like a new version of IRC... :) > > > As far as I know, you are are correct that there is no way to re-read only tracks that return non-green from the flux imager. I'm not sure if that's on the list of things to do or whether there might be a conceptual reason why that's not included in the flux imager. I think it reads a bunch of revolutions while it is sitting on the track, but one aspect of the "retry" feature of the fast disk imager that is nice is that you can take the disk ou

t, clean the head and/or the media, and then put it back in and retry just the failing spots -- the several reads that the flux imager does are all on the same "visit" and don't let you leave, clean, and then return. It seems to me like that would be a nice feature to have in the flux imager too -- but unless it is very well hidden, I do not think it's there. Yeah I've found a few times where even just opening the drive door, re-inserting the disk and having it try just the bad sectors again made a difference. That is something I really liked and was looking for in the flux image settings. Then there are all the various options in the disk analyzer that I'm at a loss to see how to really use and have so far just ignored with no issues. > > > My understanding of the situation with protected disks from non-Apple-II platforms is that there haven't been a lot of people to test these out yet, so it's in its early stages but the more people try things and report what works and doesn't, the

 better it'll get. The software is under very active development, with new builds coming out sometimes daily. It's fairly mature now for Apple II disks, a lot of people have been using it a lot, but the other platform support (and PC drive connection) is quite new. Well the non-Apple II platform support was a surprise bonus for me when I received mine as I was mostly looking to deal with my Apple II collection. But I do have a lot of Atari disks as well as other platforms listed as working with the device so am now very interested in those. I've imaged a few others but not sure what is really protected and what isn't there. Most have worked just fine but a couple have had issues which I assumed is due to copy protection but I've just been using the fast image option as I didn't yet have a drive that could flux the 40 tracks of the Atari disks. Especially when the backs of some of the discs were used. Maybe if I could tell it to only flux one side of the disk instead of trying both as

 I am using a PC drive at the moment to image the Atari discs and those don't do flippy disks very well. Best, David Williams www.trailingedge.com