08-12-2015, 08:53 AM
Hi all --
I'm attempting to archive and duplicate 8" floppies from various machines. I know it's not technically supported (the manual states that it *should* work but has not been tested, etc.) The disks I'm reading are nothing exotic (They're standard double-density, double-sided disks with an IBM format -- I could use a PC and ImageDisk to do the job, but the SuperCard is very convenient, if only it worked in this application
).
Thus far I've been successful in creating images of floppies, but have had no success in writing them back out. For drives, thus far I've tried a pair of Shugart 851s and a Qume QumeTrack 842. I'm using a DBit FDADAP (http://www.dbit.com/fdadap.html) to deal with cabling and the TG43 (higher write current on inner tracks) signals. (And the 851s are jumpered properly for the TG43 signal, as far as I can tell). I've also tried a variety of media (Verbatim, Maxell) with the same results (though the position of the bad data varies from attempt to attempt).
The issue is that upon reading back a disk that has been duplicated via the SuperCard, data is fine up until about cylinder 60 at which point bad sectors start appearing more and more frequently (though the vast majority of the data is still read OK). I tried disabling TG43 just to see if it made a difference, and it does - with TG43 disabled sectors written past cylinder 43 read back as garbage. (So at the very least, the TG43 write current select line is being correctly set by the FDADAP board).
I discussed this issue with the kind folks on the cctalk mailing list and they suggested that perhaps the SuperCard Pro isn't providing the write precompensation needed for these older drives. I cannot find any mention of precompensation in the manuals. Has anyone successfully duplicated (and verified) 8" floppies with the SuperCard Pro? Any ideas?
Thanks,
Josh
I'm attempting to archive and duplicate 8" floppies from various machines. I know it's not technically supported (the manual states that it *should* work but has not been tested, etc.) The disks I'm reading are nothing exotic (They're standard double-density, double-sided disks with an IBM format -- I could use a PC and ImageDisk to do the job, but the SuperCard is very convenient, if only it worked in this application
).Thus far I've been successful in creating images of floppies, but have had no success in writing them back out. For drives, thus far I've tried a pair of Shugart 851s and a Qume QumeTrack 842. I'm using a DBit FDADAP (http://www.dbit.com/fdadap.html) to deal with cabling and the TG43 (higher write current on inner tracks) signals. (And the 851s are jumpered properly for the TG43 signal, as far as I can tell). I've also tried a variety of media (Verbatim, Maxell) with the same results (though the position of the bad data varies from attempt to attempt).
The issue is that upon reading back a disk that has been duplicated via the SuperCard, data is fine up until about cylinder 60 at which point bad sectors start appearing more and more frequently (though the vast majority of the data is still read OK). I tried disabling TG43 just to see if it made a difference, and it does - with TG43 disabled sectors written past cylinder 43 read back as garbage. (So at the very least, the TG43 write current select line is being correctly set by the FDADAP board).
I discussed this issue with the kind folks on the cctalk mailing list and they suggested that perhaps the SuperCard Pro isn't providing the write precompensation needed for these older drives. I cannot find any mention of precompensation in the manuals. Has anyone successfully duplicated (and verified) 8" floppies with the SuperCard Pro? Any ideas?
Thanks,
Josh