The only problem I've had with these drives is then not returning to track 0 correctly.
I.I have found that if I use the COM port and "s1" then send a string of - to instruct it to shuffle the head back to zero the read/write operation is usually more successful.
There doesn't appear to be a parameter to set for "reset to zero time", just seek/spin-up (unless I misunderstand the commands).
But yes, the drive from the AES works well to read and write the discs.
Phil
Great success!
That is one of the drives from my AES. It successfully read the contents of the discs mister-freeze sent.
Excellent. I shall finish my diskette hole-punch and attempt to write a copy.
Philip
I cut the blade to include a switchback. Now it cuts more cleanly around the circumference of the blade.
Test again with card.
Phil
Made an arbor, with a hole drilled through and filed to a sharp 90° edge.
Test with thin card yields holes that are not bad, but could use improvement. I am going to change the shape of the cutting edge (I made this one by filing the rod flat with my angle grinder).
Philip
Top section of the punch, in place.
Showing the action.
Phil
I will cut it smaller and attach it to the drive clamp frame of the drive, in the position of the original sector hole sensor.
The arbor there is just a test, I shall make a raised S shape part with a hole in for it to punch against, to replace the plastic sensor holder.
Phil
Hole punch prototype. Drilled a 2,5mm hole through a bolt, then threaded a hole in a section of steel to hold it. Push-button handle and a spring to return it away from the end.
Only has a single-action cutting face, I think I am going to use a diamond file and create a U shaped indention instead of the angle cut there.
Even so, into an arbor, the hole produced in paper is moderately accurate. Quite pleased with the results so far.
Phil
I was thinking earlier; we can now extract the disc, inspect the disc and re-write what was recorded.
How about the other way around? Have the hex dump, edit that (or create our own code), write that to disc and boot that?
I was thinking on ways to boot CP/M...
Phil
Yes. I think that once they left Germany, they were both put into the same box that was marked "Parcels to USA", and then they appear to have both been treated the same upon arriving!
Either way, thank you. I am building my FLUXTEEN board during my lunch break.
Testing the discs will need to wait until I have repaired the hardware faults.
Philip
Very surprised, today the mail carrier dropped off two packages from Germany!
Philip
Okay, it would appear poking at the chips is too slow for this particular logic, so I set up a strobe on my Arduino and checked the levels with my analyzer.
D is set, Q follows D. Correct
Buffer, Y follows A exactly. Correct.
Will get some sockets and put them back in the circuit.
Phil
Alles anzeigenThis was mostly because
(I translated a part of it with ZSID into Z80 mnemonics, because I am more familiar with Z80).
If it is possible to replace the boot ROM by an EPROM (with an adapter), you can look for correct running of the 8080.
The first program needs no output, but jumping between two addresses, where it is looping for a while. With the scope you can check all addresses and data lines, also you will see the jumping between the two loop addresses when the CPU is working. At the next step you may test the RAM, because then ROM loads very early the stack pointer and does a call. If the RAM is defect, then the system crashes here.
But if the comparison of your ROM against the ROM of mister-freeze will show differences, you may try with the contents of the other ROM burning into an EPROM. I think you have an ERPOM burner. There are also EPROM emulators with RAM. They are very fast to "burn".
PAW
Very strange. When I put the PROM code into *80 language it didn't come out like that. It makes sense, there.
I do not have an EEPROM burner here, however removing the chips and testing their truth tables shows that they have severe faults.
I think I may have a marathon session of replacing microchips ahead of me.
Had a moment today at lunch so I removed U52, 59, 43, 38
3 of them are flip-flops. One had blown out underneath, the bottom of the chip was cracked. None of them work correctly.
1 is a tristate bus buffer. It does not work either.
I think that the board saw a significant voltage surge.
Philip
This was mostly because if the contents of the PROM were dumped and translated into 8080 assembly, it made no sense ...
Would it do any good to compare our ROM dumps?
It would be interesting to check see if they match (or, at least, if they are close).
Does your PROM (chip number 56) still have its paper label attached?
Mine reads 950-511301 B58K. 950 appears on all the boards, CPU 950-0090, I/O 950-0089, video 950-0091.
Philip
Alles anzeigenHi Philip,
ZitatMy 103 has some severe hardware issues. I'm about ready to begin desoldering microchips from the board to test their functionality.
Before you "start your soldering iron", did you think about a test with software in the EPROM?
Two years ago, I had troubles with my PHILIPS P2500: Repairing P2500
The RAM was defect, but instead of soldering out all components, I wrote a small program for the Z80, to find out the defective chip.
Your machine uses an 8080 processor. When you start with a simple program to check the CPU and EPROM and then step by step add other tests, you may save a lot of soldering work. Also the risk of destroying something will be minimized.
You can also write some routines, what produce periodic signals at suspect chips. So you can check the functionality by a scope.
Have a nice day!
PAW
PAW - I had thought about it but the PROM that it boots from is a small 512 byte device with a very small address and data space.
However, it would be possible, in theory, to emulate the PROM and attempt to make the CPU cycle.
I had started work on that while back, as mister-freeze shows, on my webpage if you view category "Lanier Model 103" ( http://www.oldbrokenjunk.com/wordpress /? cat = 21 ) you'll see I started working backwards through the circuitry from the PROM to try to understand how it was being used. This was mostly because if the contents of the PROM were dumped and translated into 8080 assembly, it made no sense ...
The CPU does not appear to be getting much in the way of signals that are not totally insane, and every boot the readout from the board differs.
I may attempt to reverse-engineer the board again, though the number of splits and vias make that difficult.
Philip
I believe mister-freeze has repaired the power supply problems.
My 103 has some severe hardware issues. I'm about ready to begin desoldering microchips from the board to test their functionality.
Philip
At this time, a standalone FLUXTEEN that could save to SD card or similar flash memory would be good!
(Mail unit, far end inserts disc, saves image, mail unit back containing images.)
Phil
I shall attempt to run that through OCR and a translation engine, thank you.
Currently working on deciphering the CPU board.
I stripped a bad Shugart floppy drive and am going to make a punch from it, much in the same way mister-freeze did.
I'll share what I have once it is built.
Alles anzeigenZitat von PhilAOne thing I did not see on the pages about creating hard-sector discs from regular soft-sector ones- are the 16 holes evenly distributed around the disc, or are they at differing angular intervals?
I'm sitting thinking over designs to make a hole punch.
Hi Philip,
there are 17 index holes around the disk. They all have the same distance from the center (radius) like the single index hole on a soft sector disk. The 16 holes for the sectors have the same distance to another = 360 degrees divided by 16. In the middle between two of the sector holes there is one hole extra. It's the index for the track. When you rotate the disk you get 15 long intervals to two short intervals. If you will use the existing hole as sector or track index, it doesn't matter. All holes have the same size.
PAW
PAW That answers my question perfectly, thank you.
Philip
mister-freeze One thing I did not see on the pages about creating hard-sector discs from regular soft-sector ones- are the 16 holes evenly distributed around the disc, or are they at differing angular intervals?
I'm sitting thinking over designs to make a hole punch.
-Text follows -
Has the FLUXTEEN been tested with a Shugart SA-400 yet?
I quickly tested it "in-system". And yes, it works with SA-400 drives.
But keep in mind that the SA-400 has only one side and is only designed for 35T. That is not enough for most systems
Understood. I only intend on using the FLUXTEEN to copy discs intended to be read by this drive, so that is adequate.
I might have a half height 5.25" drive spare at work, I'll have to go look in the drawers of my old desk.
Thank you
Philip
Language, to begin with, is not an issue. I just need a disc that'll boot!
Has the FLUXTEEN been tested with a Shugart SA-400 yet?
PAW, @gpospi-
Thank you both for the work you have done. I have been speaking with mister-freeze and he has kindly made some discs and verified they boot correctly.
We did it this way because my Lanier currently does not boot, so if I build a FLUXTEEN and write discs from an image, I have no initial way to validate they are good.
At least this way I have a good copy, from there I shall build a FLUXTEEN and make some hard-sector discs and then copy those. I have a spare, working Shugart SA-400 drive and a power supply so that should work to create AES hard sector disc copies.
I am waiting for some replacement DP8216N bus buffer chips to arrive (actually some older German versions of the same chip, they run cooler than the Intel/National-Semiconductor ones and are more reliable) but I almost got the computer to gm give me a "faulty disc" error (screen full of "1") by moving the chips about and freezing them.
I guess this is a real world test of FLUXCOPY though!
Thank you
Philip
(Zunächst entschuldige ich mich für meine Grammatik. Dies ist über die Google-Übersetzung.) mister-freeze hat mich hierher geführt, nach einem Gespräch über meine Lanier/AES Modell 103 elektronische Schreibmaschine. Ich habe das Netzteil repariert, aber die CPU-Schaltung ist defekt. Ich habe nicht angefangen, die defekte Elektronik zu reparieren, weil ich keine Disketten hatte, um den Computer zu starten. Ich hoffe, dass FLUXCOPY das ändern könnte.
Philip
