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02-26-2015, 09:52 AM
(This post was last modified: 02-26-2015, 09:53 AM by jfoust.)
I'd like to hear from people who are using eight inch drives with the SuperCard Pro.
The manual says "The SuperCard Pro board can use either 5.25” or 3.5” disk drives. Although you should be able to also use 8” drives, that has not been specifically tested at this time."
Is there a thread here that discusses this? I saw the CP/M thread, but it was short on details and anecdote.
I'd like to be able to read 8" SSSD, SSDD, DSDD. I don't expect to be able to read hard-sector disks.
I have compatible hardware that I believe still works. My next step will be crafting a cable.
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I just received an 8" head cleaner disk and I am waiting on the 8" drive and disks to arrive for testing. I do know that many people have been able to duplicate 8" CP/M disks using the IBM360K setting with INDEX mode. The cable should be the same as standard 5.25" (at least the PCB style connector in the pictures of the drive look the same as a 5.25" drive's PCB style connector).
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Any idea whether you handle the DEC RX02 format, where "the headers are always in single density mode but the data is written in double density mode. Also in double density mode the standard MFM encoding was modified from the standard to prevent false header detection in data." -
From here
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There are no such thing as "formats" when copying or imaging with SCP. SCP duplicates the actual magnetic flux transitions. Other than the few options for making images that are compatible with various emulators, SCP knows nothing about sectors, headers, etc. just raw flux data. This is why SCP can duplicate any type of disk.
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I think I'm asking my questions the wrong way, so help me out. At this point, I'm primarily interested in recovering data from various 8 inch floppies in my collection. (Eventually I might change my focus to the ability of copying disks.)
In the
IBM disk thread here, you mentioned you intended to write a WDC177x decoder and support the IMG format. Is that related to my desire to just get the sectors off all types of my 8 inch disks?
If I can get blocks, I'll find or write my own tools to read the file systems (I already
have tools to interpret UCSD p-System and RT-11 file systems.)
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You can do that now with the HxC floppy drive emulator software. It will convert .scp image files to/from a variety of decoded disk formats. So, you could image the disk with SCP and then convert the image to a sector based output.
SCP was never meant to decode data, just image flux data for archival storage. The HxC floppy drive emulator software does a great job of converting data with .scp images.
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No luck so far, but I'm just getting started.
I'm using a
FDADAP from DBit.com to convert from 34-pin to 50-pin.
When SCP starts, the LED display does briefly display "0". However, SCP doesn't show any drives. I've tried two of my 8 inch drives so far. I have others to try as well.
Any tips? Is there a way to display more debugging info about what SCP sees on the bus?
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SCP determines if a drive is present by selecting the drive, turning on the motor and looking at the track 0 sensor. If the sensor is not low (on track 0), then the head is stepped towards track 0 until the track 0 sensor goes low. At that point the drive motor is turned off and drive unselected.
I have seen a few drives that need a disk in the drive before it will work because the index sensor is part of the selection mechanism. Have you tried starting the SCP software with a disk in the drive.
