techtravels.org

inital results on error correction

While I have yet to actually implement the full-scale error correction as I want to, I did some manual tests today. I basically took a track that I was erroring out on, and swapped in 1-bit away values for the bad bytes.  In some cases, it appeared...

Latest articles

feasability of writing disks

While there are some other bug fixes and documentation to be done on what’s already been implemented, I started thinking about writing ADF’s to disk over the last few days. While the hardware part of it is...

funky idle routine

I’m making some progress. On a whim, I told my software to never go idle, to simply stream data constantly. I’ve never liked how I handle the idle state, and I currently lose whatever data thats in the shift...

Minor problems on techtravels.org email

I recently discovered a problem where email directed to techtravels.org accounts was bouncing. It’s been fixed. If you’ve emailed something over the last couple months and didn’t get a reply, please...

updates with FRAM access

My initial attempts to write to the FRAM used SX/B commands like SHIFTIN and SHIFTOUT. These operated at a slow rate of about 83kbits/s. It did work and functioned as a good test of the hardware setup. Now that...

finally got some work into the VSC

Ok, so I’ve finally got some work done on this tonight. I’ve decided to go to a 4-line buffer system because it’s a more round number than 3 — makes everything easier to deal with. I’ve...

java client works

Well I’m producing correct .ADF’s with the new java client. The terminal mode is also finished and working. I have some various odds and ends to wrap up with it, namely allowing the user to save his...

Parallel port access in win 2k

Accessing the parallel port directly under Windows 2000, XP, etc in a standard user app is not natively available, but there are a couple different solutions available. The free one I use is called WinIo, and it is...

minor success at 2:00am

well I’ve got MFM flowing from the PC drive now.  A couple of things: Pins 10 and 14, the pins I’ve been using since last night, appear to be correct. Pin 10 is the motor lead.  Dropping a corresponding SX...

java software

I’ve been working on the Java software the last couple days. Trying to read from RXTX is producing only 3968 bytes per read.  It looks like my USB -> serial converter uses a “transfer size” of 4096...

great performance increases

Today I’ve worked on optimizing the performance of the AFP reader and have made great strides. My original track times were nearly 475ms. This was 300ms reading the actual disk, 125ms transferring, and process...