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...

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feasability of writing disks

While there are some other bug fixes and documentation to be done on what’s already been implemented, I started thinking about writing ADF’s to disk over the last few days. While the hardware part of it is...

PC xfer working now, timing in order

Welp I pretty much solved the big problems I encountered over the past couple weeks. Ground issues — turned out I was attaching ground of one interface to Vdd on another interface. That was solved by actually...

not the PC again?

I was doing some more tests trying to get the PC to fail. It seems that the PC really likes EVEN delays between data, and it’s wierd because faster data that comes in evenly is better than slower data that comes...

new book

I recently received “On the Edge: the Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore” and have read about half of the book so far.  Very interesting read.  It’s fun to read about how the various Commodores...

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...

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...

SX EOL

I hate when this happens. 🙂 The Parallax SX microcontroller line has reached production EOL. The owner of the SX design (www.ubicom.com) has given Parallax final notice that we are to place a lifetime buy of wafers. We...

PC xfer still not working

Well I completely rewrote the code. And surprisingly, it looks pretty similar to what I did before. I moved the store/transfer routine out of (being called from) the ISR to the main loop. As soon as the ISR detects a...

PC might be the problem!

I think I’ve found at least one problem here. My PC is at least one problem. Even though I’ve done extensive tests with the PC in the past, including measuring a 9us total cycle time, it appears the PC must...

today’s successes

I really stumbled on some stuff, and I think I have traction on a couple of problems. 1. My sizes are absolutely perfect. For me, this is a big milestone. This tells me alot. I’m getting perfect distances between...