[Coco] New trick for nitros9 users

[gene heskett]

On Monday, January 10, 2011 04:03:06 pm Steven Hirsch did opine:

> On Mon, 10 Jan 2011, gene heskett wrote:
> > I cannot write a dsk image on this machine as the FDC in it doesn't
> > know what to do with a 256 byte/sector disk, so I must find another
> > way to take the code snapshots to my coco.
> 
> Gene,  I think you've mentioned this before.  Do you think it's the
> actual FDC hardware, or something that needs tweaking in the disk
> parameter files (there are a few of them that deal with floppy I/O)?
 
Its the actual FDC hardware on this ASUS M2N-SLA Deluxe mobo, a $300 board 
at the time I built this box. I have tweaked the params file as it has a 
couple bad verses in it and it will not read past that to get to the coco 
stuff at the bottom, and it also chokes on base zero numbers.  Put a 256 
byte floppy in the drive, set the params to match the disk and fire off dd 
to read the disk equals an instant, total, use the reset button on the 
front panel to recover, lockup.

> I wonder if there are any PCI bus controllers with a more cooperative
> FDC chip.  I know I have to hold my mouth just right for this to work
> on my shop machine (motherboard circa-1999) using the built-in
> controller.
> 
> Steve

I wish I knew, but the dweebs peddling motherboards look at me like I'm 
from Mars or something when I ask if the FDC can handle 256 byte/sector 
disk formats.  Even if they understand the language, its a whatever for 
would you want to do that?  Never did figure out what class they skipped.  
Tyan and biostar (spit) got it right in years past, on $50 boards yet.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
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