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

Finally had some luck with FPGA board

So I bought an FPGA eval board and a book on Verilog awhile back.  I made some progress learning things, and had some simple things like UARTs, writing to the LCD, and even some small VGA software(hrrrm, maybe I should...

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...

Let the fun begin!@#!@#

 
Everything has arrived!  I think the first order of business is soldering this darn memory chip…. Not sure how hard this is going to be, but I’m going to give it a shot!@#

On speed optimization

The theoretical limit, assuming 300rpm drives, is 200ms per track. Or 400ms per cylinder, or 32 seconds per disk. Most attempts read slightly more than one track. I read 16,384 bytes, or 262ms worth. Right now, if I...

quick memory check

So on bootup, I now have the hardware do a memory check.  I basically take and write out a bunch of values to the memory, and then read them back and make sure they read back properly.  The values written are based on...

intermittent problem found

I was just putting some finishing touches on this before I started to actually use and archive some of my stuff.  To put it to an actual real world test. Anyways, I tested an ADF generated ADF  against an amiga...

Parallax USR2SER

So I got my Parallax USR2SER in yesterday. Man is this thing tiny!! About the same width of my finger, and about 1/3 the length! And its mostly surface mount stuff….. It works like a charm. Easy installation, I...

Current updates

Wow. I can’t believe its been 20 days since my last post. Man have I been slacking. School has started up again, and add a week I was away on business/pleasure and there you have it. Here’s where I’m...

more success reading valid data!

I created a disk with a textfile called AMIGA on it which contained thousands of “AMIGAAMIGAAMIGA” throughout the entire file. The idea here is that no matter which part I happen to read/decode, I can tell...