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Need .hfe formatted by HFDC


mizapf

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Does someone have a HFDC with a Lotharek/GoTek device here? I need a formatted .hfe image because I suspect a minor glitch in the HFDC emulation in MAME; it is producing DDAMs instead of DAMs (F8 instead of FB). Maybe I misinterpreted the semantics of a bit in a HDC command.

 

With a .hfe from a real HFDC I could easily check this.

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Boy, that limits potential pool of people being able to help,

 

1) The person making it will have to own a rare HFDC and...

2) ... still have a physical disk drive (to make the image)... and

3) have something like an HDX to copy the image over to the PC using something like DSK2PC.

 

Not impossible, as I can think of two or three people, but still...

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I'd have in mind you have the Lotharek/GoTek floppy emulator connected to the HFDC, where it creates the HFE file on the memory card, then you just plug that card into a card reader and get the file from it. No?

 

I don't know how the HFDC works, but I don't believe you can format a NEW image directly on the Lotharek HxC with the TI-FDC, at least I was never able to do it in my early experimentation with it. The Lotharek is designed to work with pre-existing images.

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And re-formatting? Couldn't you use an existing DSDD image, then format it with the HFDC? How should the HxC notice that you are actually formatting the image and not just write a lot of sectors?

 

I don't have a HxC, so I'm relying on your experiences.

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Michael,

 

I just realized my Geneve system has two controller cards present in the system at the moment. A Myarc HFDC and a Myarc FDC. The Myarc FDC is what is connected to the Lotharek device. I'm going to have to do some card pulling and moving cables to get this setup to get you the file you need. It will likely not happen until this weekend. My TI system had just the Myarc HFDC in it, but no Lotharek.

 

For the others inquiring, the Lotharek with the SD card will allow you to reformat an existing image. If you have HyperCopy, you can even set the interlace and skew but this can only be done with the TI FDC, CorComp FDC, and Myarc FDC. The Myarc HFDC is not supported under HyperCopy for formatting.

 

Beery

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Do you need it formatted by the HFDC and by something like MDM V so it uses the Myarc DSDD 320K format?

 

I should be able to take a Corcomp 360K “blank”, stick it into a HFDC GoTek and use MDM V to format it. Just need to find some time, which has been hard lately.

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No, just the 360K.

 

The reason is that there is a bit in the write sector and format track command of the HDC9234 that determines whether the sector shall be marked as deleted. The value of the bit differs in the specification between both commands (one requires it to be 0, the other one to be 1). When I formatted a disk in MAME, I saw that all sectors are deleted. However, none of the controllers really cares about this mark, so it has no effect. But it could have, in particular with own read/write functions in copy protections.

 

I need to find out whether the DSR is wrong, or whether it is my HDC9234 emulation. For that reason I need an output of a real chip to compare.

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Do you need it formatted by the HFDC and by something like MDM V so it uses the Myarc DSDD 320K format?

 

I should be able to take a Corcomp 360K “blank”, stick it into a HFDC GoTek and use MDM V to format it. Just need to find some time, which has been hard lately.

 

MDM5 (V1.25) with what I had on my TI system, offers both 16 sectors per track and 18 sectors per track for formatting.

 

Beery

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Here is a Java-based command line tool that I wrote to analyse HFE files.

 

 

$ java AnalyseHFE
Usage: AnalyseHFE <hfeImage> <track> <head> {"raw" | "cell" | "byte" | "sect" } ["noaddr"] [<outfile>]

 

It runs on Linux, Mac, Windows and needs a current Java RE.

 

If you specify no <outfile>, the output is shown in the console where you are running the program. "noaddr" suppresses position output in the "raw" and "cell" mode.

AnalyseHFE.zip

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Just an update to the tool. I should mention that it can show the contents of non-standard disks like Diskassembler.

  • raw = track bytes from the HFE file
  • cell = FM/MFM cells encoding
  • byte = cells interpreted as bytes, showing address marks
  • sect = show layout of the track, including sector contents.

Eventually, I will add this tool to TIImageTool.

 

 

AnalyseHFE.zip

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And re-formatting? Couldn't you use an existing DSDD image, then format it with the HFDC? How should the HxC notice that you are actually formatting the image and not just write a lot of sectors?

 

I don't have a HxC, so I'm relying on your experiences.

 

You can format an image on the HxC drive, at least since the Rev B hardware version.

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Michael,

 

Not sure what is going on yet, but I configured my Geneve with a Myarc HFDC. I tried formatting. The Lotharek stepped through both sides of all 40 tracks formatting. Then, when it went back to sector 0, the MDOS formatting routine gave me an error.

 

Not sure why yet.

​Either way, here is the file formatted, but with no correct writes on sector 0. Not sure if this will help you or not.

​Beery

 

DSDD2.hfe

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