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

RXTX and Java

As I mentioned before, I’m using RXTX to do serial communication in Java since Sun has dropped support for serial communication under the Windows platform.  I want to revamp my read routines on the java side...

still hashing some ideas around

I’ve been getting lots of good ideas from the smart guys over at Parallax. They are throwing out a variety of methods and ways I can get this job done. I will say that I’m a little overwhelmed at the pure...

of bit-shifted sectors

I’m beginning to think more and more that my software on the SX is just fine. Perhaps minus the idle routine mentioned in the last post. I have to do something there. However, without the idle routine, I was only...

data rate vs throughput

Although I’m transmitting from the Parallax SX microcontroller to the PC via USB at a data rate of 2mbps, the actual throughput is much less.  First, there is some overhead, namely start and stop bits, which is...

Ground issues

Although I’ve been attempting to have a common ground for this whole project — I’m not sure that is going to happen. At least not at this stage of the game. I tried connecting the ground off the floppy...

more updates

I know I’ve been bad keeping you guys updated….. This doesn’t mean I haven’t been working on it, however. I recoded the ISR completely in assembly because I was just plain sick of the damn...

new face of the amiga floppy project

You’d think that with the lack of posts lately that I haven’t been doing anything. BUT, in fact, I’ve been quite busy. I now have the entire floppy project on one single circuit board, the SX28...

Current status updated

Current status updated I was originally going to use a Microchip PIC, but they are just too darn slow. I gave up on the idea of using the PIC as a one-chip solution, and tried to use it as just a clock generator feeding...

great performance increases

Today I’ve worked on optimizing the performance of the AFP reader and have made great strides. My original track times were nearly 475ms. This was 300ms reading the actual disk, 125ms transferring, and process...