1581copy diagnostics for Womo

1581-Copy/FLT, ver. 0.54, 200207142008. Copyright (C) 1998-2002 Wolfgang Moser This tool comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; read SRC\COPYING for details. 1581-Copy setup: - FDC type : extended FDC (unknown part id), version 0x9080 - Drive : A: - Retries : 3 - Interleave : 1 - Step rate time: media default - Single sector : off - Verify : off - Formatting : off Low-level-reading CBM disk in drive A: Waiting for disk drive ready status, please insert a disk ... Dis At this point I inserted the CBM disk. There was no more in .txt file but in subsequent runs without output.txt I copied the following text from screen: Disk status: (old) disk is in CBM incompatible disk media type detected... Please change the disk... Disk status: (old) disk is in I then removed the disk with 1581copy program and inserted the CBM disk with following text displaying on the screen: Disk status: new disk is in General failure reading drive A Abort, Retry, Fail? At this point I discontinued. In subsequent trials, I replaced the disk with 1581copy at the Abort,retry,fail and it wrote a .d81 file along with .txt file but there was nothing on either one. The file I was trying to convert had a label of mosaic which should have satisfied the file length limitation encountered when trying to convert backgammon Hope this helps. I know you have other things to do so for now, I am discontinuing this project unless there are other facts you need to know from me. Thanks again, Walter

Hello Walter, you posted some very interesting things here. Walter Johnson wrote: > 1581-Copy setup: > - FDC type : extended FDC (unknown part id), version 0x9080 Phew, it seems, that I'll first have to look up, which floppy disk controller you are using. With some luck I'll find a datasheet of it and may be able to include some special handling in further versions. > Disk status: (old) disk is in > CBM incompatible disk media type detected... Please change the disk... > Disk status: (old) disk is in Ok, with your controller, the automatic diskchange detection doesn't seem to work. Now it's time to introduce some of the parameters: /D - disabling the special check for Commodore style MFM disks and perhaps the following: /N - don't wait for a diskchange, but directly start to transfer the disk. With this switch it's required, that the disk to transfer is already in your drive. The complete command line will be then: 1581copy a: mydisk.d81 /D /N Again, if you don't get 1581-Copy working with these switches the output of 1581-Copy may be of some interest. Another possibility may be that your floppy disk controller doesn't like or doesn't understand the multisector commands. In this case the following parameter may help: /S - Select single sector reading only But this one should only be tried as a last option. Single sector copying may require other options to reach a better performance (greater interleaves like /I:2) > I then removed the disk with 1581copy program and inserted the CBM disk > with following text displaying on the screen: > > Disk status: new disk is in > General failure reading drive A > Abort, Retry, Fail? This is an error message from DOS. 1581-Copy reprogrammed the floppy disk controller completely and because it couldn't detect it correctly, it may be that it cannot be used anymore until the next reboot. > Hope this helps. I know you have other things to do so for now, I am > discontinuing this project unless there are other facts you need to know > from me. You are right. Currently I don't develop 1581-Copy any further and won't go into the soruce code to fix the problem with your controller. But when I start to develop the next version again, I would like to have some more informations about all new failures. Here are some questions, that may help me to find a solution to your problem in the future: - Who is the manufacturer of your floppy disk controller? - If the FDC is integrated into the motherboards chipset, who is the manufacturer of the chipset? - Who is the manufacturer of your Mainboard, what is the exact type of it? - Are you using Linux? Which floppy disk controller type does Linux autodetect, when it boots up? Womo

Hello again, some corrections: Wolfgang Moser wrote: > Walter Johnson wrote: >> 1581-Copy setup: >> - FDC type : extended FDC (unknown part id), version 0x9080 > > Phew, it seems, that I'll first have to look up, which floppy > disk controller you are using. With some luck I'll find a > datasheet of it and may be able to include some special handling > in further versions. Ouch! Subversion 0x80 means, that the (subversion) command No. 0x18 is not supported with this extended controller. Therefore the FDC answers with 0x80 for an invalid command code... I don't see a chance to find out the exact type of this FDC going the "software way". But I should mention, that I have seen _many_ extended controllers with the 1581-Copy version ID of 0x9080. Two of my own boards give such a result code. Until now I didn't need more informations than knowing, if the extended controller is an intel or another one, because some intel controllers need some special handling. In your case we would need to find out the exact controller type by looking at the hardware itself (chip types). Womo

Hi Womo, On Sat, 28 Jun 2003 19:43:05 +0200, Wolfgang Moser <wnah@d81.de> wrote: >> - FDC type : extended FDC (unknown part id), version 0x9080 >Phew, it seems, that I'll first have to look up, which floppy >disk controller you are using. With some luck I'll find a >datasheet of it and may be able to include some special handling >in further versions. There are *many* different FDC's out there in the wild today. Is there some way we can help collect data for you on the different FDC's? /*Raj*/

Hello Raj, RajW wrote: >>> - FDC type : extended FDC (unknown part id), version 0x9080 >> >>Phew, it seems, that I'll first have to look up, which floppy >>disk controller you are using. With some luck I'll find a > > There are *many* different FDC's out there in the wild today. Is there > some way we can help collect data for you on the different FDC's? Since I just want to support all the different controllers in a most generic way, it does not make sense to develop special features for all of the different controllers. If you or somebody else wants to sqeeze out any single bit of functionality of your floppy disk controller I can only recommend to use Linux and Alain Knaffs fdutils: http://alain.knaff.linux.lu/fdutils/index.html He already _did_ all the work, I would have to do then. It is another case, if there's a system, where 1581-Copy cannot be use even with some additional parameters. If 1581-Copy cannot be used in general on one system or a controller, I call it a bug. Maybe it can be fixed by changing some BIOS options, maybe a special helper application (DOS TSR) could be used. If the but can only be fixed by integrating special support into 1581-Copy, I call for further informations about this special system (chipset, FDC, BIOS options, ....). I hope you will understand that. Womo

Walter Johnson wrote: > Tried again with suggested additional parameters with essentially same > results. > > I give up on this project. Come on, Walter, don't give up that early! All you need to do is get that soldering iron and desoldering pump and replace your old crappy fdc controller with a new one. ;-D Sorry, sometimes I can be a mean bastard... :-] /Steppe