180K 5.5" Floppy Drives and Controller

[budz2355]

I started this thread Jan 1st, 2016....

 

Just want to give a huge shout out to everyone. Got the splitter in from china today. After a LOT of messing around I finally determined the back metal housing had scraped off the plastic from the edge connector adapter ribbon cable and was causing a short on the drive. Got the ramDISK successfully moved (Chris you are the man!) so I had space to move the disk controller to slot 7 and then feed the splitter cable through the gap in the back of the PEB.

 

The TI is the bane of my existence at times, but at times like this it is so awesome. 180K drive and 3.5" media to boot. Thanks again to EVERYONE, a ton of you have helped me with this project alone. I know it will never look as good as Omega's, but here ya go.... (also the most important tool is in the middle of the shot)

 

EDIT: Sorry for the poor image quality, that is DSK2 successfully reading!

Edited April 29, 2016 by budz2355

[Omega-TI]

Hey Budz,

Congratulations! I'm glad you got it working. It's looking pretty sweet.

 

 

Now for the next step... << CLICK HERE >>

[Shift838]

Hey Budz,

Congratulations! I'm glad you got it working. It's looking pretty sweet.

 

 

Now for the next step... << CLICK HERE >>

 

I like the beer. Nothing like working on computers while drinking beer!

[Shift838]

i have done the 80 track mod many times. it's straight forward and worth the investment for more space.

 

Hardest thing was to decide what drives should be 80 track. I usually modded so that DSK1 and 2 were 80 track and left 3 as 40 for backwards compatibility.

[Omega-TI]

i have done the 80 track mod many times. it's straight forward and worth the investment for more space.

 

Hardest thing was to decide what drives should be 80 track. I usually modded so that DSK1 and 2 were 80 track and left 3 as 40 for backwards compatibility.

 

Yes, the 80 track mod is a must in my book. It's amazing how much more useful and fun the TI is when you can have more goodies on one disk/image. Now with Tim's 9640 menu system to bring it all together it's Nirvana. Hopefully before the end of 2016 the DDCC-1 clone will make it into circulation. Since the HxC can emulate two drives at the same time, the DDCC-1 would be 720 X 2 or 1.44 megabytes of TI-Goodness available at one time at the press of a single button. I could easily live with that.

[+Schmitzi]

.

I have the 80-track-mod as 40/80/80 (5.25"/3.5"/5.25") in my systems with TI-Controllers, except one left original.

I just was a bit anxious about "boot compability" or anything like this

[Shift838]

 

Yes, the 80 track mod is a must in my book. It's amazing how much more useful and fun the TI is when you can have more goodies on one disk/image. Now with Tim's 9640 menu system to bring it all together it's Nirvana. Hopefully before the end of 2016 the DDCC-1 clone will make it into circulation. Since the HxC can emulate two drives at the same time, the DDCC-1 would be 720 X 2 or 1.44 megabytes of TI-Goodness available at one time at the press of a single button. I could easily live with that.

 

or you could have with the Myarc and 80 track upgrade, or if the HxC will do dsk3 and 4, then you could potentially have 2.88 mb (720k x 4) !

[ckoba]

That's one of the really neat things about the TI disk system: sector 0 of a disk or disk image contains the disk geometry.

 

Have an HxC on DSK1 and DSK3, with a 3.5" drive on DSK2, and want to use a 2S1D40T image on DSK1? No worries -- just use Ralph's xdm99.py and reset the geometry to 1S1D80T with "xdm99.py <original dsk> --set-geometry 1S1D80T -o <new dsk>".

 

No compatibility worries whatsoever. Set all three drives to 80T and enjoy Gazoo's goodness.

[Omega-TI]

 

or you could have with the Myarc and 80 track upgrade, or if the HxC will do dsk3 and 4, then you could potentially have 2.88 mb (720k x 4) !

 

THAT, my friend is my eventual goal!

As soon as Ksarul releases that DDCC-1 clone I'm gonna buy one and plug it in. Then I'll probably get another HxC and the two together will will act as four, which will be utter bliss in my book.

[Shift838]

THAT, my friend is my eventual goal!

As soon as Ksarul releases that DDCC-1 clone I'm gonna buy one and plug it in. Then I'll probably get another HxC and the two together will will act as four, which will be utter bliss in my book.

Hell. I'm buying 2...

[RickyDean]

Hey to all of you disk controller guru's out there. I am researching the possibility of replacing the disk controller chip on the TI Card, Percom Card, and the TI sidecar with a pin compatible chip (WD2793 possibly) that will be capable of double density. Would the DSR from the unreleased TI double density card work(with modifications) to help to try to accomplish this? Or the Corcomp? Myarc floppy card? I am also researching the possibility of creating an adapter between the TI PEB card slot and the IBM XT/AT ISA slot that with the addition of a DSR eprom would allow the use of older IBM cards in the TI environment (SCSI, MFM, IDE) that could be used in the TI PEB as well as a Rave 99 PEB motherboard. This was a direction I ws wanting to travel 17 years ago, but was sidetracked from the TI world. Thanks for anything you may be able to contribute to my understanding.

[+Ksarul]

The DSR from the TI DSDD card won't help here, as that card uses the NEC765 disk controller chip (I have a pair of these cards). You would probably have to write your DSR from scratch (but I believe the source code for the TI DSR is out there, so you would have a really good starting point).

 

On the bus adapter, I'm not sure you would have a lot of luck there, as you'd have to build a DSR for each and every card you tried to put on it. It might be an interesting way to get capability, but it would also be a lot of work. . .

[RickyDean]

Work.... has never been a problem. Resources, now that's a different thing. But I will attempt the near impossible....sigh.