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 ?
On 2008-04-19 12:58 +0200, Andre Majorel wrote:
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 ?
Pardon my insistence but... No reply because it's too trivial a question or because no-one has an answer ?
Back in DOS days, AnaDisk could copy disks below sector level so I guess a typical PC FDC does have a read-track command.
Hi Andre,
On 2008-04-19 12:58 +0200, Andre Majorel wrote:
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 ?
Pardon my insistence but... No reply because it's too trivial a question or because no-one has an answer ?
I've been too busy to look. I think think fdrawcmd will do it. Have you looked at libdsk, perhaps that lets you do it easily.
Back in DOS days, AnaDisk could copy disks below sector level so I guess a typical PC FDC does have a read-track command.
Yes, it does.
Cheers,
Ralph.
I've been too busy to look. I think think fdrawcmd will do it. Have you looked at libdsk, perhaps that lets you do it easily.
I don't think it will. As far as I'm aware, the only way to get the raw track data out of the PC floppy hardware is some horrible dodge with two drives, where you initiate the read on one drive and then up the data rate and switch over to the other one. This is done by utilities such as disk2fdi and adfread under DOS and Windows, but I think to add the same capability to Linux would require a specialised kernel module.
On Sat, 19 Apr 2008, Andre Majorel wrote:
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 ?
A standard fd-controller does not support that. The best you could do is scan the layout of a track of the floppy using readID commands. You can partially reconstruct the layout if you have accurate timing information.
A controller that would be able to read the raw track data is the Catweasel MK4 controller. But I have no idea of the software support for it.
http://www.jschoenfeld.com/indexe.htm http://amiga.think42.com/news/news99_e.htm
Greetings, Alexander
-- André Majorel URL:http://www.teaser.fr/~amajorel/ Do not use this account for regular correspondence. See the URL above for contact information. _______________________________________________ Fdutils mailing list Fdutils@fdutils.linux.lu https://lll.lgl.lu/mailman/listinfo/fdutils
-- Alexander van Heukelum, Institute for Theoretical Physics, Utrecht University, Leuvenlaan 4, 3584 CE Utrecht, The Netherlands. Room: MG307, Phone: (+31) (30) 253 4622, Fax: (+31) (30) 253 5937.
.''`. "I also prepended comments to [...] defining what : :' : 'left' and 'right' means." -- Joe Korty `. `' (Patch accepted for inclusion in linux 2.6.6!)
Hi Alexander,
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 ?
A standard fd-controller does not support that. The best you could do is scan the layout of a track of the floppy using readID commands. You can partially reconstruct the layout if you have accurate timing information.
Has this changed over time? Only I thought Acorn's RISC PC switched to using an SMSC 37C665GT:
http://www.smsc.com/main/datasheets/37c665gt.pdf High-Performance Multi-Mode Parallel Port Super I/O Floppy Disk Controllers
which, at the time, was the kind of thing used in PCs. That had a Read a Track command, see page 54 of the PDF.
Has it been dropped as PC hardware's moved on?
I guess another alternative is to get an old floppy controller that supports the formats you're interested in and drive it directly.
Cheers,
Ralph.
On Mon, 21 Apr 2008, Ralph Corderoy wrote:
Hi Alexander,
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 ?
A standard fd-controller does not support that. The best you could do is scan the layout of a track of the floppy using readID commands. You can partially reconstruct the layout if you have accurate timing information.
Has this changed over time? Only I thought Acorn's RISC PC switched to using an SMSC 37C665GT:
http://www.smsc.com/main/datasheets/37c665gt.pdf High-Performance Multi-Mode Parallel Port Super I/O Floppy Disk Controllers
which, at the time, was the kind of thing used in PCs. That had a Read a Track command, see page 54 of the PDF.
Hi,
Interesting! However it seems quite useless to me :-/. Only the contents of the data field is sent to the host, and it will only return data for which all the ID except sector number match the command. There seems to be no way of correlating data <-> sector number either.
Has it been dropped as PC hardware's moved on?
It seems to be available on the NEC µPD765, so I expect it to be present on just about any fdc. It does not return whole tracks including the gaps and data/address marks, though.
Greetings, Alexander
I guess another alternative is to get an old floppy controller that supports the formats you're interested in and drive it directly.
Cheers,
Ralph.
-- Alexander van Heukelum, Institute for Theoretical Physics, Utrecht University, Leuvenlaan 4, 3584 CE Utrecht, The Netherlands. Room: MG307, Phone: (+31) (30) 253 4622, Fax: (+31) (30) 253 5937.
.''`. "I also prepended comments to [...] defining what : :' : 'left' and 'right' means." -- Joe Korty `. `' (Patch accepted for inclusion in linux 2.6.6!)
On 2008-04-21 18:12 +0200, Alexander van Heukelum wrote:
On Mon, 21 Apr 2008, Ralph Corderoy wrote:
[The SMSC 37C665GT] had a Read a Track command, see page 54 of the PDF.
Interesting! However it seems quite useless to me :-/. Only the contents of the data field is sent to the host, and it will only return data for which all the ID except sector number match the command. There seems to be no way of correlating data <-> sector number either.
Has it been dropped as PC hardware's moved on?
It seems to be available on the NEC µPD765, so I expect it to be present on just about any fdc. It does not return whole tracks including the gaps and data/address marks, though.
The WD1770 and friends had a useful read track command, apparently carried over from the 1791 :
http://www.teaser.fr/~amajorel/wd1770/wd1770-wd1772.100dpi.13.png
I had assumed the PC FDC were 1791-like enough to have it too...
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Alexander van Heukelum -
Andre Majorel -
John Elliott -
Ralph Corderoy