TESTFDC usage

Dave Dunfield dave06a at dunfield.com
Wed Jun 6 18:17:10 CDT 2007


> There are some NEC and Mitsubishi 3.5" drives that have a fair number 
> of additional signals on the odd-numbered connector pin side--usually 
> used on CNC and some lab equipment on 9801-series architectures.  
> When replacing these, we've found that any old 3.5" drive won't do--
> an exact replacement is necessary.

I guess I should have been more specific... the information I posted
was specifically about the setup you are likely to find in PC drives.
There are lots of variations in possible drive types if you open up
to "anything", but I didn't (and still don't) feel that discussing all
the things you are not likely to see on a PC would make the water any
less muddy for those guys who are trying to figure out what they need
to do to characterize their PC FDC.

> I'm surprised no one mentioned 3.5" DSED testing.

Neither TESTFDC nor IMD support ED, simply because I don't have an ED
compatible drive - I don't think I've ever run across one. If I can't
test it, I can't reliably implement it (anyone want to send me a drive? :-)

I also don't find ED very relevant to archiving vintage computer diskette
images - are there any systems in need of such attention that use ED as
their standard disk format?

Dave



--
dave06a (at)    Dave Dunfield
dunfield (dot)  Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com
com             Collector of vintage computing equipment:
                http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html



More information about the cctech mailing list