Reading a floppy disk manually

I think you're on your own with this one mstecha. I certainly can't see the sense behind this kind of project. However, if you DO get it working, I'd like to see it!

Brian

checkmate said:

Just for laughs. I highly doubt you used the same PC back then and now do you?

Click to expand...

No :lol:

I'm not sure which machine I first started PicProg on?, but my main PC's have gone:

XT
286
386DX
486
P166
Celeron 667

I still use the Celeron today, although I previously upgraded the processor to a Celeron 1100, and this last week to a 1GHz PIII - which I got from a friend who I helped upgrade to a P4 3GHz.

Thinking back?, I suspect Picprog first appeared on either the 486 or P166?.

Before PC's I had (in reverse order):

Commodore Amiga 500
Commodore Plus 4
Tangerine Microtan 65

(I've still got all those three machines!).

Nigel Goodwin said:

Exo said:

We've told you about the risks before. If you use everything like it's supposed to nothing will get damaged. I've been using the same programmer on the same pc for 3 years now...

Click to expand...

Only 3 years? :lol:

Click to expand...

That's when i started playing around with pic's...
I hadn't seen the light till then :?

mstechca, you still didnt tell us what microcontroller you're going to program with it...

Also, if you want to stand any chanse of this working you're going to need a microprocessor (a Big capable one) to actually read from your diskdrive and program the other microcontroller with it...

and about writing the data to disk with norton diskdoctor... are you kidding ?
you're going to enter a 2K program manually into diskdoctor so you can write it to disk as raw data ? :shock:

mstechca, I would seriously reconsider the floppy drive...

How about 8 tracks? Or plain old vinyl records. No wait, punched cards.



Have fun with it anyhow. I can see the fun factor in your project. Usefulness? Not quite. But fun? Absolutely.

Exo said:

..and about writing the data to disk with norton diskdoctor... are you kidding ?
you're going to enter a 2K program manually into diskdoctor so you can write it to disk as raw data ? :shock:

Click to expand...

On top of all this, I think the fact that there is an entire computer with I/O and BIOS, operating system ( even if it is DOS ) supporting/allowing the use of diskdoctor is being forgotten by mstechca.

The same equipment will be needed to read the data back.

mstechca, maybe just using a "super I/O card" that is replaceable for $5 would be an easier way to repair an "oops"?

There is alot more overhead than start and stop bits for writing data to any disc drive. There is error correction, location info, ID info, etc, etc. This is not a simple serial shift register storage method. Take a look at the following link, I think it would be very instructive :

**broken link removed**

It is 18 pages of concise information, and it only covers how a drive operates and communicates, never mind how to build all the support architechture involved, and write software for it to run.