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
