01-04-2014, 10:54 PM
I spent several hours today trying to figure out what I broke in the code that stopped the copier from duplicating disks. Drive to drive and drive to flux to drive just stopped working. I was using Shadow of the Beast III for testing. It was dieing on track 74, head 1 during the loading process (I have a digital track display on the Amiga) most of the time, but sometimes track 0, head 0 was even bad. Looking at the duplicated tracks with the analyzer, it looked like the data was "smeared". I used the analyzer to read and write the track and got the same results. I changed SCP boards and went back to older firmware versions, all without change. So, I went and grabbed some disks that I had used previously and copies worked fine. It turns out the 6 "new" disks that I was now using for the first time had randomly bad tracks!
In a fit of disgust I tossed the disks in the trash and continued working on code. Right before leaving my office tonight, I pulled the disks out of the trash. Tomorrow I will write a disk tester function that will write data patterns to every track and tell you if the disk is usable... and I have some good test disks to check it out!
So, if you are having problems copying disks, make sure you are using good disks!
In a fit of disgust I tossed the disks in the trash and continued working on code. Right before leaving my office tonight, I pulled the disks out of the trash. Tomorrow I will write a disk tester function that will write data patterns to every track and tell you if the disk is usable... and I have some good test disks to check it out!
So, if you are having problems copying disks, make sure you are using good disks!