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

Schmitt Trigger

Welp, after talking with some smart guys on forums.parallax.com, it looks like the Schmitt Trigger feature on the SX is going to allow me to get rid of my 74HC132 that I’ve spent at least a couple hours messing...

first real world tests

Well I tried to read about 70 disks in via my project tonight. I had mixed results. First, the Teac loves HD media but doesn’t fare as well with LD media. The Samsung hates HD media, but does very well with LD...

slacking indeed

I’ve been horrible about the project lately.  Dunno why. Today is the first time I’ve looked at it in quite some time.  The last couple hours have been spent trying to remember exactly where I’ve been...

java client preview

I’ve put up a preview of the java client in action. It’s a 2 minute video with narration. You’ll need a DivX codec installed in order to view it. I probably could have messed with compressing this...

Good news. Floppy now under SX control

OK, so I finally bit the bullet and have the floppy drive under direct SX control. I have my amiga power supply, which is a modified PC supply with harddrive leads powering the drive directly with +12v and +5v.  I also...

writing merged USB comm code

Now that I have USB receive working in the main PC code, its time to merge the USB transmit(and receive for commands) into the main SX code. I have two pseudo-code versions written. 1> First version uses the ISR to...

added version control and another command

I’ve really wanted version control for a long time.  The ability to go back and undo diverse changes across sessions is valuable.  I also feel a little safer and don’t mind doing semi-destructive edits...

will put up sample files

I’m going to put up a sample file or two, but I wanted to get the smallest complete group of bytes that I can…. ie like one full sector, etc. So far, I’m just basically streaming bytes, via disk copy...

migrated website to a new host

Over the last week, I migrated this blog to a new hosting provider. GoDaddy was such a pig and the site just ran like molasses when hosted by them. I couldn’t be happier with the switch that I’ve made, but I...

adding more commands

Now that I *think* I’ve got a handle on the reading portion, I’ve been adding a couple more commands. I added support so that the SX knows what cylinder number it is on.  The F and B commands increase and...