More disk issues

[+Ksarul]

And I have a pair of EPSON 360K drives that are also 40 Track, 3.5 inch drives. These weren't around all that long (and they are a drop-in replacement for the standard DSDD (or DSSD) TI drives), so they are not generally available, but they are a nice weird thing in my collection of parts.

[RickyDean]

Great. Like I said, I probably have about 5 of these in a box, and access to probably 20 more from the junk room in the attic at work. And the gotek I got is the 1.44mb version sooo. I can do GoTek DSK1, 3.5 dsk2 and 5 1/4 dsk3 (because I have 5 1/4 floppies for editor assembly and tiForth. Looks like I will be doing the mod after all. With a modded cable (thanks for the link).

All the Goteks are really capable of 1.44MB, it is the firmware that limits it(some are designed to operate in sewing equipment and so forth). If you use the replacement firmware that can be purchased from the creator of the HxC, the Geneve(rare)(TI99's, bigger, but younger brother, 3rd party) can use 1.44 MB disk, completely, using a HFDC(rare)(Hard and Floppy Disk Controller).

Any limits are in the disk controller chip not the Gotek, if the right firmware is applied. I have a HxC and 3 Goteks, 1 of which has the purchased firmware, and I can read 1.44 MB disk images in my Geneve. I have a 360k disk image with Rockrunner and when I try to load it onto an unmodifiesd TI disk controller, it gets to the title screen and stops.

[Sinphaltimus]

 

You can use 3.5" disks even without 80 track mod. They will be filled only halfway then because the controller will not know that there is something beyond cylinder 39.

 

I did this on my Geneve. I simply forgot to switch to 80 tracks, but did not notice at first. The only problem occurs when you change your mind later, or when you exchange disks with other people.

Oh cool!

[Sinphaltimus]

All the Goteks are really capable of 1.44MB, it is the firmware that limits it(some are designed to operate in sewing equipment and so forth). If you use the replacement firmware that can be purchased from the creator of the HxC, the Geneve(rare)(TI99's, bigger, but younger brother, 3rd party) can use 1.44 MB disk, completely, using a HFDC(rare)(Hard and Floppy Disk Controller).

Any limits are in the disk controller chip not the Gotek, if the right firmware is applied. I have a HxC and 3 Goteks, 1 of which has the purchased firmware, and I can read 1.44 MB disk images in my Geneve. I have a 360k disk image with Rockrunner and when I try to load it onto an unmodifiesd TI disk controller, it gets to the title screen and stops.

So, for the one gotek I am getting specifically for the ti, do I have to select what capacity drive it is going to emulate and stick with just that one?

 

For instance, I could use it as a 1.44mb yes, but what if I want to use it as a 300 or 700k drive as well? Is that dependant in the virtual disk image I load or do I have to change a jumper setting or reload the firmware or something along those lines?

 

 

I found the 2 HxC websites. It looks like the firmware is available for download, I don't see a purchase option.

Edited August 30, 2016 by Sinphaltimus

[RickyDean]

http://torlus.com/floppy/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1683will tell you some about it. You have to email the creator who will give you paypal information (will cost 10 euros)and you will use his firmware updater then which will connect to a server and change the bootloader in the chip that is on the Gotek. this will allow you to use the Gotek with the TI. Now I do not know if the Amiga hack would work with the TI, I have no experience there.

[+mizapf]

Oh cool!

 

You know, floppy drives are actually a pretty dumb piece of hardware, other than later hard disks or other devices. A floppy drive has a motor pin that makes the spindle spin at a fixed rate. Also, it has a step pin and a direction pin that triggers the stepping motor to move the head. The head pin activates one of the two heads. Then the data-in pin goes through some driver circuit and lets current flow through the coil in the head (the DENSEL pin determines the strength of that current), while the data-out pin delivers pulses that are induced by the magnetic flux changes under the head when it is switched to reading. There is an index pin that pulses each time the hole appears at the sensor. That's all, essentially. Everything else must be done by the controller.

 

For that reason, it is actually irrelevant how many tracks the drive has. If it has less than expected, then the stepping motor will push the head towards the inner end, maybe with some noise. If it has more, then the inner tracks are never visited.

[Sinphaltimus]

 

You know, floppy drives are actually a pretty dumb piece of hardware, other than later hard disks or other devices. A floppy drive has a motor pin that makes the spindle spin at a fixed rate. Also, it has a step pin and a direction pin that triggers the stepping motor to move the head. The head pin activates one of the two heads. Then the data-in pin goes through some driver circuit and lets current flow through the coil in the head (the DENSEL pin determines the strength of that current), while the data-out pin delivers pulses that are induced by the magnetic flux changes under the head when it is switched to reading. There is an index pin that pulses each time the hole appears at the sensor. That's all, essentially. Everything else must be done by the controller.

 

For that reason, it is actually irrelevant how many tracks the drive has. If it has less than expected, then the stepping motor will push the head towards the inner end, maybe with some noise. If it has more, then the inner tracks are never visited.

Nope. I never knew anything about the mechanics of a floppy drive. I rarely delved in to hardware unless it was for a specific purpose like trouble shooting or implementing some one else's mod.

 

Thanks for that though. I guess I had a lot of assumptions regarding floppy drives and different computers.

 

It comes from back in the day when it was impossible to do anything between a pc and an Amiga (with floppies) because the 3.5 inch drives were not the same mechanically. Or at least the minor differences made them very incompatible.

[+mizapf]

Amiga does not use ISOIBM formatting, so while the drives may be mechanically alike, neither one can read the media of the other.

 

TI always used the standard IBM formatting, and although you cannot directly read the TI floppies in the PC, it is just a matter of reconfiguring the floppy controller. I once wrote a program in Linux to read and write my TI floppies.

[Sinphaltimus]

I heard you can with a piece of software.

 

http://www.mainbyte.com/ti99/howto/ti99pc.html

[Omega-TI]

I wonder how many people here still have a PC that old to pull it off?

[sparkdrummer]

I use it everyday.

[RickyDean]

Til

 

I use it everyday.

Till my Corcomp 9900 CES went south, I was using it every evening after work to move disk to image. I recovered about 60-70 disks so far this way. Will continue when I get it or my Corcomp 9900 PEB card rebuilt. I am using an old Dell laptop with a removable 3.5 floppy drive to do read the copied 3.5 disk after copying the contents to the disk from a 51/4 floppy. When I get the above mentioned controllers repaired I can skip this step with the Gotek/HxC emulators.

Edited August 30, 2016 by RickyDean

[sparkdrummer]

I have a pile of 3.5 disks I have formatted to ss/sd, ds/sd ds/dd and ds/qd. When I find a dsk I want to look at on real iron, I just pop it into the pc, launch ti99pc and copy it. I don't use it quite as much since I set up an unmodified RS232 to utilize HDX to transfer stuff. Transfering from floppy to pc for archiving, etc. is just as easy.

[RickyDean]

I have a pile of 3.5 disks I have formatted to ss/sd, ds/sd ds/dd and ds/qd. When I find a dsk I want to look at on real iron, I just pop it into the pc, launch ti99pc and copy it. I don't use it quite as much since I set up an unmodified RS232 to utilize HDX to transfer stuff. Transfering from floppy to pc for archiving, etc. is just as easy.

My problem is that I have a lot of 51/4 floppies and some of them may never be recoverable again though many, if not most have already been imaged by someone, look at whtech.com. I do have some that had info that to me was important, so I will attempt to recover them, and as I have had this as my only option, till recently, it was the way it worked.

You do what you have to do to get the job done. Similar to me placing a 2002 Duramax Diesel engine into a 2007 GMC Sierra body, to get the truck rolling, till I can afford to rebuild the 2007 Duramax engine(expensive). I do what I have to do(and yes, I am doing this right now, many irons in the fire, so to speak).

 

As a side note, I want to convert the qbasic files in TIPC to VB and or C# and build a GUI that would do this better, similar to mizapf's Linux solution. I would also like to try creating a GUI disk manager environment for the TI99 with the SuperAMS, but don't hold your breath Omega.

Edited August 30, 2016 by RickyDean

[sparkdrummer]

I have a ton of 5.25's as well - The ones I want to archive I transfer to a 3.5 and then do my thing with ti99pc. Being the screwball that I am, I have been methodically archiving all the "vendor" software that was available in years past. They are all on my SCSI2SD drive as well as on my pc as an image file. This is why I sometimes ask for certain programs like TImaginations PYSBORG so I can complete my archive of said vendor.

Speaking of 5.25's, I read quite a bit of fellow TI'ers and/or computer junkies having lots of trouble with them. I have lterally hundreds of 5.25 disks and only have found one or two that had issues. I can only think that a big part of failure depends on where one lives. Being in Arizona I'm assuming that the usual low humidity maybe helps preserve them?

[RickyDean]

I have a ton of 5.25's as well - The ones I want to archive I transfer to a 3.5 and then do my thing with ti99pc. Being the screwball that I am, I have been methodically archiving all the "vendor" software that was available in years past. They are all on my SCSI2SD drive as well as on my pc as an image file. This is why I sometimes ask for certain programs like TImaginations PYSBORG so I can complete my archive of said vendor.

Speaking of 5.25's, I read quite a bit of fellow TI'ers and/or computer junkies having lots of trouble with them. I have lterally hundreds of 5.25 disks and only have found one or two that had issues. I can only think that a big part of failure depends on where one lives. Being in Arizona I'm assuming that the usual low humidity maybe helps preserve them?

This is probably true, I have had mine in storage in an old semi trailer for 17+ years, in south Georgia and some of them got wet, a lot of junk on them, though they have been dried. I have found out a process from Googling, where I can take them out of the sleeves and clean the disk itself and recoverer some data. I have also considered the Kyroflux for those that cannot be recovered the old fashioned way, that will wait till I get one, and finish the good looking ones first. The ones I have recovered and imaged are placed in one location, and the ones that don't seem to want to give up their data, go into another location for further processing down the road.

[+Schmitzi]

I still have a pile of the floppy disks that Chris Bobbit / formerly Asgard sent to me, where I cannot read data from.

I cleaned some disks (tried to), but I think, nevertheless they killed some of my drives or heads.

Really no problem at all, but at some point I stopped trying to read the obviously bad ones.

And was a good choice to read the good floppies first

If anybody wants to give them a try....

(but they are in one of the gazillion boxes now, for my move)