On 8/26/2021 2:51 PM, Jay Jaeger via cctech wrote:


On 8/25/2021 5:58 PM, Mike Loewen via cctalk wrote:
On Wed, 25 Aug 2021, Dennis Boone via cctalk wrote:


    As a few of the signals on the 34-pin connector are different than the Shugart layout, I'm considering making up a custom cable and connecting it to my Catweasel MK4+. I have a utility from Andrew Lynch called "cwns", which is a modified version of "cw2dmk" to read Northstar hard-sector (10 SPT) diskettes. I might be able to modify that to read the VG 16 SPT diskettes, if the 1043-2 will work with the Catweasel.

It will not - but it has nothing to do with the cabling.  I already tried with my catweasel.  I was able to read flux, but between the hard sectoring and (possibly) different meta markers for the floppy sectors, the .scp file is useless.  I just got my Cypress board for a fluxengine in the mail yesterday, but haven't set it up yet - maybe tomorrow.  The website for fluxengine indicates it ought to work.


The fluxengine almost works with my Micropolis drives - but there are some problems.

1) The drive select pins are different. I am having *some* luck access one driver of my daisy-chained pair, but not the other. The fluxengine setup and/or the drive also seem to get confused when I try to access the other drive. I submitted an issue on github for more flexible drive selection / motor control capability. One could work around this with suitable cabing / jumpering.

2) So far I have not been able to read an entire Mod II disk successfully - lots of good sectors on two, but not all without errors on either one. But I have not tried cleaning the heads on my drives, or trying the Mod I with different select jumpering.

3) The Micropolis drives are slow stepping, so I added multiple commands to seek to cylinder 0 to my script - not sure if that is actually working right.



Mike Loewen                mloe...@cpumagic.scol.pa.us
Old Technology                http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/

JRJ

JRJ

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