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

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...

Minor problems on techtravels.org email

I recently discovered a problem where email directed to techtravels.org accounts was bouncing. It’s been fixed. If you’ve emailed something over the last couple months and didn’t get a reply, please...

java client works

Well I’m producing correct .ADF’s with the new java client. The terminal mode is also finished and working. I have some various odds and ends to wrap up with it, namely allowing the user to save his...

updates with FRAM access

My initial attempts to write to the FRAM used SX/B commands like SHIFTIN and SHIFTOUT. These operated at a slow rate of about 83kbits/s. It did work and functioned as a good test of the hardware setup. Now that...

finally got some work into the VSC

Ok, so I’ve finally got some work done on this tonight. I’ve decided to go to a 4-line buffer system because it’s a more round number than 3 — makes everything easier to deal with. I’ve...

java software

I’ve been working on the Java software the last couple days. Trying to read from RXTX is producing only 3968 bytes per read.  It looks like my USB -> serial converter uses a “transfer size” of 4096...

Good news good news. First perfect .adf

Good news indeed! I’ve managed to create a fully functioning .ADF from a floppy.  I matched the output from my hardware/software combination with a “transdisk” output, and it matches exactly. I used...

video showing current progress

I posted a video to youtube a little while ago showing my progress. It’s a little long winded (surprise surprise for those who read my posts) but it shows basically the framebuffer portion of the hardware working...

minor success at 2:00am

well I’ve got MFM flowing from the PC drive now.  A couple of things: Pins 10 and 14, the pins I’ve been using since last night, appear to be correct. Pin 10 is the motor lead.  Dropping a corresponding SX...

Parallel port access in win 2k

Accessing the parallel port directly under Windows 2000, XP, etc in a standard user app is not natively available, but there are a couple different solutions available. The free one I use is called WinIo, and it is...