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

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!
 

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...

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...

SX EOL

I hate when this happens. 🙂 The Parallax SX microcontroller line has reached production EOL. The owner of the SX design (www.ubicom.com) has given Parallax final notice that we are to place a lifetime buy of wafers. We...

not the PC again?

I was doing some more tests trying to get the PC to fail. It seems that the PC really likes EVEN delays between data, and it’s wierd because faster data that comes in evenly is better than slower data that comes...

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...

SlackFest 2007

Ok, I’ll admit it.  I’ve been slacking like the best of them. I’m not horribly unsatisified with my progress, especially this year.  The first four months of this year I achieved the following: * Whole...

Of timing, and general progress

I’ve determined that programming is like whack-a-mole(only took me 15 years to figure this out!) Fix one problem, and another one that already works stops working. This is what happened to me yesterday. My ISR...

PC xfer still not working

Well I completely rewrote the code. And surprisingly, it looks pretty similar to what I did before. I moved the store/transfer routine out of (being called from) the ISR to the main loop. As soon as the ISR detects a...

more hardware

When in doubt, just throw some more money at the problem! 🙂 Actually, I’m kidding. But I do have the Parallax USB2SER on its way — maybe the USB will be much faster, buffered, and more reliable. Those...