- Fdutils

Formatting Mirage disks, again...
by Gordon JC Pearce MM3YEQ 25 Mar '09

25 Mar '09

A couple of years ago someone asked about formatting Ensoniq Mirage disks, and there were some replies that suggested varying degrees of success. Now, I notice that superformat is capable of writing mixed sector sizes, which sounds ideal for this job - I need a single-sided DD disk with five sectors of 1024 bytes and then one of 512 bytes, numbered from zero. I can't, however, actually figure out how to tell superformat what I want. Right now I'm just interested in formatting the disk - I know I need to write some stuff to a couple of sectors so that the Mirage will recognise it, but I'm not worried about that just now. Any advice on how to use mss would be great ;-) Gordon

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Re: [Fdutils] [patch 2/3] floppy: support arbitrary first-sector numbers
by Alain Knaff 27 Oct '08

27 Oct '08

akpm(a)linux-foundation.org wrote: > From: Keith Wansbrough <keith(a)lochan.org> > > The current floppy_struct allows floppies to number sectors starting > from 0 or 1. This patch allows arbitrary first-sector numbers - for > example, 0xC1 for Amstrad CPC disks. > > This extends the existing 1-bit field (FD_ZEROBASED, bit 2 of stretch) > to 8 bits (FD_SECTMASK, bits 2 to 9). > > Currently 0x00 denotes a first sector number of 1, and 0x01 denotes a > first sector number of 0. We extend this by interpreting FD_SECTMASK > as the first sector number with the LSB flipped. Thanks. I now added support for this to fdutils, downloadable as patch 20081027: http://fdutils.linux.lu/fdutils-5.5-20081027.diff.gz Regards, Alain

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Repeated track seeks
by Michael Zapf 16 Sep '08

16 Sep '08

Hello, I just found out how to read my old TI-99 disks using fdutils. I have 40 tracks, 18 sectors per track, two heads, 256 bytes/track, MFM. setfdprm and dd/cat did not work. I get 8 records in, and then the drive starts seeking tracks. So I use fdrawcmd, feeding in the track/head/sector number. I wrote a script which issues fdrawcmd for each track, reading 18*256 bytes. ./fdrawcmd read $PHEAD $TRACK $LHEAD 0 1 18 0x1b 0xff length=4608 rate=1 track=$((TRACK*2)) >> out.dsk One problem, though: For each track, the drive seems to seek in and out, which heavily slows down loading. That is, instead of stepping to the next track, it seems as it if steps back to track 0 and then forward to the next track. What can I do to prevent this? Michael

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Re: [Fdutils] Read track ?
by Andre Majorel 25 May '08

25 May '08

On 2008-04-24 09:15 +0100, Simon Owen wrote: > On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 9:39 PM, Andre Majorel <aym-xunil(a)teaser.fr> wrote: > > > The WD1770 and friends had a useful read track command, > > apparently carried over from the 1791 : > > With normal sector commands, the address mark detector is > enabled only when looking for header or data fields. With > WD17xx read track it's enabled for the whole command, causing it > to resync to bit sequences found elsewhere on the disk (header, > data or gaps). > > Read track is good for poking a bit deeper, but it's useless for > doing byte-level dumping of tracks. Try it on track 41 of any > disk and you'll see it trip up when it hits the track number in > the first header field! I wasn't aware of that ! Thanks. -- André Majorel <URL:http://www.teaser.fr/~amajorel/> Do not use this account for regular correspondence. See the URL above for contact information.

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Read track ?
by Andre Majorel 21 Apr '08

21 Apr '08

Hello all. Is there a way to do a read track, i.e. reading whole tracks including the gaps and data/address marks, on a PC running Linux ? -- André Majorel <URL:http://www.teaser.fr/~amajorel/> Do not use this account for regular correspondence. See the URL above for contact information.

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[fdutils] Please help me format a Mirage floppy
by Ken Millar 13 Jun '07

13 Jun '07

Hi Craig, Came across your article whilst searching the web for info about the Ensoniq Mirage. If possible I would like a copy of your "mdisk" application, plus .exe and micro-howto. I have various PCs with various flavours of Windows from 98SE to XP. I am a novice but I am correct in assuming that whilst your app will format to Mirage standards you don't actually put the Mirage OS on the disk? If not could you get a copy of the OS from your friend? I would still be interested in the format utility regardless. Many thanks for reading Ken Millar

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Fdutils mailing list address change
by Alain Knaff 05 Jan '07

05 Jan '07

Due to some hard disk issue at tux.org, and also for simplification purposes, the address of the fdutils mailing list has been changed. The new list address is now: fdutils(a)fdutils.linux.lu The archives URL is: http://fdutils.linux.lu/pipermail/fdutils/ The subscriber list has already been imported into the new host, so no specific action is needed on your part in order to keep your subscription. You only need to remember to use the new address (fdutils(a)fdutils.linux.lu) when posting to the list. Sorry for the inconvenience, Alain

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Re: [fdutils] Need help with weird floppy issue
by Uwe Teetz 20 Mar '06

20 Mar '06

Hi Donnie, I found an even better solution, put an AM (455kHz) LC IF filter and a capacitor in place of the ceramic resonator. Mine worked fine, adjustable from 400 to 600 kHz the motor following the in speed. If you recycle a filter from an old radio, look to it from the bottom, it should have a capacitor build in and connected to two of the mostly five pins. Use those two. Very common are the outer two pins on the side with three pins. I will do some testing with the floppymeter later on. Uwe ----- Original Message ----- From: Donnie Barnes To: Uwe Teetz Sent: Wednesday, March 08, 2006 3:19 PM Subject: Re: [fdutils] Need help with weird floppy issue On 3/8/06, Uwe Teetz <mhteetz(a)aon.at> wrote: Hi Donnie, to the motor speed: the 3 phase syncron motor controller has a ceramic resonator as reference -> nothing to adjust. Many of my drives here use 492kHz and 491kHz resonator. This slight difference will not help. For testing I removed the resonator and feed to one pin a signal from an extern oscillator with 1V~ output (you have to try which one is the input to the controller) See pic2. I could regulate the motor from half to double speed easily. You could also try to replace the ceramic resonator wit a 455kHz resonator used as IF filter in AM radio receiver or put one small RC oscillator in to the case. RC oscillator (potentiometer adjustable) samples are plenty in the net. I've got a pretty crappy (compared to yours) signal generator that may do what I need. If not, I can certainly build an RC oscillator. Looks like you had yours set to sine wave, but I suppose I'll take a peek at the signal off the oscillator on the device with an oscope. I assume I just need to do floppy access on the PC to make it spin, right? Thanks for the great info! --Donnie _______________________________________________ fdutils mailing list fdutils(a)tux.org http://www.tux.org/mailman/listinfo/fdutils

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Need help with weird floppy issue
by Donnie Barnes 13 Mar '06

13 Mar '06

Okay, this is an oddball one. Anyway, I'm into classic arcade video games. A small series of Sega games used a floppy drive for their game code instead of ROMs. I have one of these games, and I believe my floppy disk itself has gone bad. Problem is that they used a strange format setup. It's a standard 3.5" PC floppy drive in the game and uses standard HD disks. Supposedly, however, the disk format alternates 256/1024 bytes per sector. I've even seen where the game I have uses 8K per sector. Now, the image has been read successfully off of a disk in a PC running windows and Anadisk. But nobody so far has figured out how to *write* the image. The games are emulated in MAME, and thus the disk image exists in MAME ROM archives. The image for this game is 1925120 bytes in size. So, is it even possible to write that image back to a floppy? If so, how would one tackle it? I tried following the fdutils docs to create a special disk device and then using setfdprm to set it to the closest mss type I could find (1920/1440), but when I told it to dd to that device with a blank floppy, it hung (well, it was cranking on the drive for 15 minutes, but never completed and I couldn't kill -9 the dd process until I ejected the floppy). Any help would be appreciated. --Donnie _______________________________________________ fdutils mailing list fdutils(a)tux.org http://www.tux.org/mailman/listinfo/fdutils

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Re: [fdutils] Need help with weird floppy issue
by Uwe Teetz 08 Mar '06

08 Mar '06

Hi Donnie, to the motor speed: the 3 phase syncron motor controller has a ceramic resonator as reference -> nothing to adjust. Many of my drives here use 492kHz and 491kHz resonator. This slight difference will not help. For testing I removed the resonator and feed to one pin a signal from an extern oscillator with 1V~ output (you have to try which one is the input to the controller) See pic2. I could regulate the motor from half to double speed easily. You could also try to replace the ceramic resonator wit a 455kHz resonator used as IF filter in AM radio receiver or put one small RC oscillator in to the case. RC oscillator (potentiometer adjustable) samples are plenty in the net. good luck, Uwe _______________________________________________ fdutils mailing list fdutils(a)tux.org http://www.tux.org/mailman/listinfo/fdutils

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