emulatorII-list

Hi there,

The EII formats the floppy disks with 2 sides of 80 tracks, each 
having 3584 bytes (probably one big sector).
This is 560K on a disk on which DOS only formatted 360K. 
It's pretty sure that this massive capacity is only possible by NOT 
putting physical header/gap zones between sectors (of e.g. 512K) and 
that may be the reason why a PC can not read them.

These disks hold both the OS and the soundbank. The 476K of sounddata 
are written sequentially on the disk immediately after the OS area, 
and has exactly the same layout as the SoundDesigner for Emulator II 
files. So if you want this part of the disk, just unload them with SD 
on a Mac. 
If you want to get the OS part, you'll need to find a way to read the 
disks on a PC...
...something no one ever succeeded in the last 20 years.

This is due to this softsectored 3584 byte tracks, which is not a 
sectorsize known by a PC floppycontroller.
Another issue may be the rotation speed of the drive, which may be 
different from a PC's drive (controller command). Although I'm not 
sure about this, because I haven't heard yet of two different speeds 
available in 5.25 drives - I think they were all 360rpm. But it's a 
known problem with some 3.5 drives (e.g. the CASIO FZ series suffers 
from this problem). Anyway, the Catweasel controller is capable of 
different speeds, so that may be a solution if the problem really 
exists. 

I have also tried to read EII disks on my PC's (with 5.25 drives) but 
was unsuccessful until now. But I was planning to do some new 
experiments in the near future... only because of the challenge since 
SDII is for sure a much better way to keep an archive then reading 
the floppies !

Good luck

///E-Synthesist

  



--- In emulatorII-list@yahoogroups.com, "hoschi1103" <totti@...> 
wrote:
>
> Oh, you noticed my accent :-)
> 
> SD on MAC and stuff I did already.
> 
> Wanting to read the disks straight from a PC floppy drive is the 
same
> as my efforts in analyzing "Mac Mode". I want to do it because it's 
there.
> 
> From last nights results, it looks like EII is writing data to disk
> straight sequential, without any other information, just by counting
> the data and switching heads or advancing the track (should think 
so,
> as it's using a SIO as floppy drive controller and that would be the
> easiest way). Currently I'm counting out where on disk the overlays
> end and the banks begin.
> 
> By the way, any idea about a mac emulator that handles serial 
forward
> to the PCs serial port with a bit more timing precision than 
basilisk?
> 
> Greetings,
> Hoschi
>