Date: Tue, 16 Sep 1997 12:38:39 -0400 (EDT) From: "User Rdkeys Robert D. Keys" <rdkeys@seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu> To: dkelly@fly.HiWAAY.net (David Kelly) Cc: rdkeys@seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu (User RDKEYS Robert D. Keys), freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: 8" Floppy drive? (Of Course.....(:+}}.....) Message-ID: <199709161638.MAA22045@seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu> In-Reply-To: <199709161522.KAA26984@fly.HiWAAY.net> from David Kelly at "Sep 16, 97 10:22:50 am"
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> At the very least this should be good for a laugh, but the boss dug up > about 50 8" floppies and wants the data off of them and onto modern > media. From way back, I recal the 1.2M floppy hardware interface wasn't > terribly different from the 8". Where both 8" and 1.2M disks turn > 360 RPM vs 300 RPM for 360k disks. Maybe there is a chance an 8" drive > can be attached to my FreeBSD system? Why laugh.... you have an honest application that needs a proper solution. Those that would laugh are shortsighted..... I use 5-1/4 AT HD drives as 8 inchers on my Cromemco Z80 box. It works fine, if the cabling is correct. If not you need to make up an adapter cable to go from 50 pin to 34 pin. Also there is a drive ready jumper that may need to be set or unset depending upon going from 5 to 8 or from 8 to 5 inch busses. That was pin 11/12 on the 50 pin header if I remember correctly, but I would have to check on my machine to make sure exactly. It is critical to proper timing operation of the AT HD disks on a z80 5 inch buss. The 8 incher would need to be set as drive 2 to work correctly on the flippy cables on PC controllers. There is no logical reason why it should not work on a FreeBSD box. Using no format control software, it is merely a plain 5-1/4 inch HD floppy. Using mtools it could be a dos floppy clone. Using cpmtools it could be a CP/M clone. It might even be possible to run a cpmemulator in a dosshell on a unix box.....(:+}}..... talk about overhead! > I actually have a couple of 8" drives. Wonderful sound those solenoids make at drive access.....(:+}}..... > Would be interested in any suggestions, FreeBSD related or not. > Meanwhile I've got a lead on a Xerox 820 with CP/M that may be able > to read these disks. Who knows what format they are in! May find > a hard-sectored system but have soft-sectored floppies. A xerox 820 would be good if the disks you have are SSSD. Then kermit things across. IF they are SSSD format disks, any CP/M box will read them. If higher density or double sided, there was no standard, so you are shooting from the hip. On FreeBSD, it would be the controller that would determine whether or not SSSD operations could be done (some do, many don't). They used to sell a special floppy card designed specifically to run SSSD operations (Compaticard series cards). That, and a floppyless ide card in a generic 3/486 box with FreeBSD, and the proper software hacks, and it should work just fine. With DSDD drives and proper cabling, the FreeBSD box should care less about it being 8 inch or 5-1/4 inch. Some 8 inchers were slow in track seeks, so IF the timing for track stepping is too fast, the 8 inchers would lag and be problematic, unless delay loops were added to the floppy drivers, maybe, to slow the seeks from 6ms down to 15-20ms or so for most 8 inchers. I have one of those cards somewhere, and a spare 386 board..... maybe I will load it up in an xt crate and see if I can hook an 8 incher to it and have FreeBSD spin it up. Ahh, ain't dinosaurian tech fun.....(:+}}.... The reality is that you would probably be better off kermitting it into a serial port..... (:+}}..... less hacking required, but you need a clone of the original machine which wrote the 8 inchers. Anymore I use kermit to connect my CP/M boxes to dosstations or unix workstations..... If you need kermit for the xerox, I probably have that set up somewhere. > David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly@hiwaay.net (hm) > ====================================================================== > The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its > capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system. CP/M was rather tight in its overhead, since the whole OS would fit in about 6.5K, and there was a z80 unix somewhere, too, but it took about 32K compiled from assembler and did not leave much room on a 64K box...... Good Luck Bob Keys rdkeys@seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu
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