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

PC xfer working now, timing in order

Welp I pretty much solved the big problems I encountered over the past couple weeks. Ground issues — turned out I was attaching ground of one interface to Vdd on another interface. That was solved by actually...

Timing image

I just wanted to throw this up here to show an example of how the timing is working on my project. Its working well. Top line is the input signal from the drive. Bottom line is the firing of interrupts, either from the...

reading problems

I hate leaving projects for awhile.  Any more than a few days, and you lose the focus, you lose the insight, and remembering exactly where you left off can be a pain in the butt. This time, I’ve come back to a...

Latest attempt

Tim mentioned something in the last post regarding SYNC which really had me thinking about how to SYNC the data coming in the drive with the data going to the UART of the USB2SER converter. Then I was thinking, now that...

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...

out of the country!

I just left Amsterdam, and now am spending some time in Brussels.
I have some preliminary photos up in the gallery.

Floppy project is still on my mind!
 

still giving me trouble

I spent some time on the project last night.  Still no-go. The SX and the software is behaving as expected by responding to commands, transferring the buffer, so and so forth.  I’m getting garbage data from the...

PC might be the problem!

I think I’ve found at least one problem here. My PC is at least one problem. Even though I’ve done extensive tests with the PC in the past, including measuring a 9us total cycle time, it appears the PC must...

added commands

So I’ve added commands to support forward/backward stepping and upper and lower sides. R for Read D for Dump F/B for stepping either Forward or Backward U/L for selecting upper or lower side. I’ve tested...

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...