Applesauce FDC

[Hagstrom, Paul]

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 )

There is a Slack channel in the apple2infinitum workspace where a lot of the same sort of discussion had been taking place before, but now that there are more platforms represented, John's expanded out to Discord as well so it's not embedded in an Apple-II-centered Slack workspace.

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 out, 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.

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.

 -Paul

> On Nov 1, 2021, at 5:05 PM, David Williams via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> 
> I've recently picked up a new Applesauce floppy disk controller and have been playing with attaching various different drive types and imaging different Apple II, Atari, TI and other floppy disks with it. So far I've mostly imaged unprotected disks and run them in various emulators just fine. I've since added a sync sensor to one of my older Disk II drives and started to make some flux images of protected disks. These too seem to run fine in the emulators I've tried. The documentation on the device is limited at the moment, particularly the software, and while it is slowly being updated I was wondering if anyone else here had any experience with the setup. Any hints, suggestions, best practices, "do this to get the best copy", etc, to pass along would be appreciated. For example I read you can try to recover borderline disks by having it do multiple passes of the bad sectors. I see how this is done on the Fast Image option and has helped a couple of times but don't see any way to do 
> 
> something similar via the Flux Image option. Does it not work/matter with those? Also I see sometimes it reports a file as bad if I do one image type but if I do the other it comes back as okay. So I tend to play with both when I can. There is a lot of options and functions in the Flux Image option that I just really don't know how it works or what to do with it so far that any info would be great. I know it can image non-Apple II disks as well and I've done a few. It works great on Apple II protected disks but wonder how to deal with protected disks from other systems? Or is that more an issue of other emulators and such not having something like the .woz format being used with the Apple II? I bought this for my Apple II collection and it was a nice surprise to learn it could work with other systems too, just looking for more info about them as well. So far I really love the device and it has been worth the long wait for new units to come back into production again. Especially as it
> 
> is a new design that allows for attaching PC floppy drives now as well. I've noticed the doc on the site being updated, just hope that they can find time to update more, particularly in regards to the client software. Best, David Williams www.trailingedge.com (http://www.trailingedge.com)