Side B Atari imaging problem
#1
Scratching my head a little on this one-- I have a Panasonic 475-4 lashed up and working great with SCP doing Atari 800 disk images with a8rawconv and SCP's Disk Archiver application... Except for side B of the disks.

I'm aware that a8rawconv doesn't work with B-sides directly yet, so I'm using SCP's Disk Archiver (v1.90, HW 1.1, FW, 1.2) in Atari 400/800 Splice mode (x5) with the index sensor turned off. I always get (what I assume to be) an empty file as a result of the imaging pass.

Any suggestions what I might investigate as the root cause?

Thanks,
-Clay

P.S. here's one of the resulting files: 
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1305...05x%29.scp
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#2
This appears to be a 1.2mb drive? Most 1.2.mb drives have built in "smarts" where it must detect an index hole before the drive will ever enter the "ready" state and output data. Most 360K drives do not have this feature and will output data regardless.

You might try consulting the manual for this specific model of drive to see if there are any jumpers that might help. But overriding that behavior is not a common option.
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#3
(12-29-2015, 02:33 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: This appears to be a 1.2mb drive? Most 1.2.mb drives have built in "smarts" where it must detect an index hole before the drive will ever enter the "ready" state and output data. Most 360K drives do not have this feature and will output data regardless.

You might try consulting the manual for this specific model of drive to see if there are any jumpers that might help. But overriding that behavior is not a common option.

Ah, that did not occur to me... (I saw Jim weigh in on a thread about B-sides on AtariAge and didn't notice any caveat about that, but the discussion may well have been 360K drive specific.)  I wonder if I can just electrically spoof the output of that opto with something off the motor RPM sensor instead.  Hmmm...


Thanks,
-Clay
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#4
You don't need to.  SuperCard Pro does that already unless you have a drive that requires the jumper change.  An easy test is to run the SuperCard Pro software and go to the editor/analyzer and turn off the INDEX requirement for READs.  Insert the back side of a disk and click on READ TRACK.  If the track data shows up, then your drive will read the back side of a disk as it is.  However, looking at your dump it appears that your drive needs the jumper mod.
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#5
(12-29-2015, 04:27 PM)admin Wrote: You don't need to.  SuperCard Pro does that already unless you have a drive that requires the jumper change.  An easy test is to run the SuperCard Pro software and go to the editor/analyzer and turn off the INDEX requirement for READs.  Insert the back side of a disk and click on READ TRACK.  If the track data shows up, then your drive will read the back side of a disk as it is.  However, looking at your dump it appears that your drive needs the jumper mod.

Thanks-- any chance you have a pointer to the "jumper mod" in question?  (I don't really see anything in the configuration jumpers that sounds promising, are we talking about a jumper wire or something?)

-Clay
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#6
I believe that setting the EX jumper on is what makes the JU-475 drives work. I will check my drive when I arrive at my office in the morning.
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#7
(12-29-2015, 10:03 PM)admin Wrote: I believe that setting the EX jumper on is what makes the JU-475 drives work.  I will check my drive when I arrive at my office in the morning.

Thanks in advance for checking! I tried a quick test by just manually shorting the EX contacts while reading (damn Panasonic and their weird, tiny jumpers which I have no spares of) and that didn't seem to work, but maybe it only samples that input once during cold start or something... I'll make a better effort later today and see if that's it.

-Clay
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#8
Yes, the EX jumper is the one I have set on my drives... Just EX, and none of the other jumpers in that row. You do need that set at power up. If you look in the 5.25" jumpers info (posted here in the forums), you can see that this jumper bypasses the index requirement when the head is stepped.
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#9
(12-30-2015, 08:53 AM)admin Wrote: Yes, the EX jumper is the one I have set on my drives... Just EX, and none of the other jumpers in that row.  You do need that set at power up.  If you look in the 5.25" jumpers info (posted here in the forums), you can see that this jumper bypasses the index requirement when the head is stepped.

Ah, interesting-- I need to have MS on or the drive won't spin. I also have GX jumpered from the factory, but if that's a "don't care" I'll just move that jumper over to EX and see what happens.  Thanks!

-Clay
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#10
You can't have GX jumpered... that should be on EX.

None of my drives have MS jumpered.

My drives have the following jumpered:

DS0
DS2
EX
DC
DA
IE (with a permanent wire on the PCB)
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