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

new timing image

I think this is timing from like 97 or so, and this is pretty good. I’ve switched to 93 for the time being, because I’ve had the best results with that. This still shows accurate reading of this particular...

Halloween 2007 AFP updates

DTR-based PC to SX flow control is now enabled and working, thanks to jd2xx. It has been tested, and SX responds appropriately to a STOP request. Strangely, with the new jd2xx code, it doesn’t appear that flow...

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...

funky idle routine

I’m making some progress. On a whim, I told my software to never go idle, to simply stream data constantly. I’ve never liked how I handle the idle state, and I currently lose whatever data thats in the shift...

memory chip mounted

Welp, I got impatient, and went to Radio Shack to buy their soldering station. I still have mine coming in the mail, but its ground from Arizona, which may as well be ground from Alaska. I soldered the header pins onto...

man am I a slacker

Yeah, I’ve been slacking lately on the project. School has been keeping me busy, work too. My current problem is that something seems up with the data checksum routine, the code on the PC that is processing the...

first real world tests

Well I tried to read about 70 disks in via my project tonight. I had mixed results. First, the Teac loves HD media but doesn’t fare as well with LD media. The Samsung hates HD media, but does very well with LD...

more followup winIO vs inpoup32

I did a little informal write test. A small tight loop that simply raises pin 1 and then lowers it again. Both in as little code as possible, as clean as possible. WINIO: Total time to raise and lower again, 2.5us...

new design on SX software

Welp, I’m having trouble tweaking my existing SX code. If I modify the timing of the current code, I’m getting all garbage output — even adjusting small amounts to one side or the other, produces much...