Big_Mo Posted December 26, 2015 Share Posted December 26, 2015 (edited) I'd love to see this completed. I'd also love it if he could update the sensor scan the way the 5200 version did, with the scanner actually showing what each object is as opposed to a flashing dot. Edited December 26, 2015 by Big_Mo 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ledzep Posted December 26, 2015 Share Posted December 26, 2015 If there is ever a completed game released on cartridge, I vote for an updated box like the old black boxes - It would be cool to see a different painting showing something specific/unique to Star Raiders II. Easy to suggest, I know. But how cool would it be to have a box the same size/style as the original 8-bit boxes? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctorclu Posted December 27, 2015 Share Posted December 27, 2015 I was thinking of making a label for my Atarimax cart that uses this picture: Seemed more appropriate now since the ship has lasers. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UNIXcoffee928 Posted December 27, 2015 Share Posted December 27, 2015 My suggestion is this: There should be a new thread created for this Corvus DR Project. One that has all manuals, updates, DIP settings, and user-experiences with different configurations available in one place. I'm a System Administrator, and have experience with disaster recovery. First, ! avoid using this drive ! until you have the right combination of people & equipment to do the job. An unplanned write or modification of anything on the disk can further hamper, or ruin later attempts to get the data off the drive, when you do, finally, have the right combination of people & hardware. I would also avoid using a professional DR service. While, at face value, it seems like the right thing to do, it isn't, because we are dealing with very old, obscure technology. These drives are rare & expensive! Unless you have a friend that's 70, who used to work for the three letter agency who's acronym coincides with that of the National Skateboarding Association, it's probably a bad idea. There's a very high likelihood that a modern DR company would, either 1. admit that they can't do it, or 2. eff things up real good... and still charge you ridiculous fees. There are only a few people who could really have a great chance of doing a proper job of disaster recovery on this drive. The main problem is that they are geographically dispersed. They are: MetalGuy66, Warerat, FlashJazzcat, Bob1200XL, Candle, Sloopy, & myself. I'm sure there are a few others, but I know with 100% certainty that if all of those people were in the same room with an 800 system, the failed drive and at least two other known good Corvus drives, that there would be a very high likelihood of recovering the data. Clearly, Kyle22 & Fibrewire would also play a part in such an endeavor, due to their extensive familiarity with the drives. As well as other long-time Corvus users... of which, there are not a lot of! The only way that I can see this, as a situation that could really happen, would be via video-conference. With those people for input, then, and only then would adding professional Disaster Recovery people into the mix be a helpful thing. Since a video-conference with these people is also highly unlikely, I suggest that a new thread be started, to perform the function of being a Knowledge-base for Corvus drives. This is a project of extremely high importance. I wouldn't trust it to a DR company. If that data is lost, it will NEVER be replaced. That drive has set somewhere for decades, undisturbed. Let it set for another 6 months, while the Atari user-community develops the proper background to do proper DR on a Corvus drive. I would also suggest that all owners of Corvus-equipped systems give us a heads-up, as we will then have an established user-base to develop a Test-Environment user-community. The first order of business is to determine how the controller "remembers" bad bloc/sector allocation. This would be the first thing that could really screw things up, if you just pop the drive itself into another Corvus drive enclosure. Using another drive's bad block map is not what you want to be doing! (except, maybe as a last resort). I would begin things by opening the enclosure, wearing an Anti-static strap, and doing a full inspection of the hardware, looking for any obvious problems, ones that can be seen visually. Next, I would re-seat all ICs. Next I would check all DIP switch settings. Next I would be sure to clean all connector pins, to ensure that oxidation isn't causing the problem. That is the basis of how you should start, without even turning it on, at all. we can develop a very finely detailed checklist of things to do to bring this drive back to life... It can be done, to one degree or another. It would be ideal to have a fully-functional Corvus-equipped system to act as the boot drive, and set up the (supposedly) failed Corvus as an auxiliary drive, as long as that is supported. This would be the minimal Test environment, to start with. I hope that we are able to resurrect this Very Important, Historic piece of code! 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted December 27, 2015 Share Posted December 27, 2015 I agree, this is more than just an unfinished prototype, its a HUGE title, its a true follow up to one of the most regarded software titles in the history of gaming, Star raiders sold more Atari's than perhaps any other title and this is the real follow up. The source needs to be carefully recovered and bugs found and removed plus actually finishing the project under the hopeful supervision of the author himself. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted December 27, 2015 Share Posted December 27, 2015 (edited) I've rebuilt mechatronics on these disks. What model? Capacity? Revision? And serial number? Certain disks have well-documented fail modes and specific fixes. Added: I also have all the service documentation, schematics, specifications, scope and test point waveforms, and an assortment of spare parts both new and used. Calibration and alignment procedures. Diagnostic software, roms, and all the other goodies for low-level operations. For all Corvus disks. Hopefully the HDA will never need to be opened and that simply proper operation and some TLC will suffice. Edited December 27, 2015 by Keatah Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted December 27, 2015 Share Posted December 27, 2015 I would argue the first order of business is to disable write functionality and determine HDA integrity. Then clone the surfaces. Work from the clone to complete logical recovery. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted December 27, 2015 Share Posted December 27, 2015 Sounds like the way to go, last thing we need are 'writes' to the disk surface. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UNIXcoffee928 Posted December 27, 2015 Share Posted December 27, 2015 I would argue the first order of business is to disable write functionality and determine HDA integrity. Then clone the surfaces. Work from the clone to complete logical recovery. No argument there, we just don't know how far gone it is. I believe that the only sign of life that he mentioned was hearing it spin up, so I presumed a worst-case scenario, where diagnostics have already failed to recognize the drive. Who knows, it could be something very simple... or it could be a very complex problem, or multiple sets of problems of varying complexities. Since you have all of the documentation, would you like to start a new thread on "Corvus DR", and post what you have? This would be really helpful, so that all of the information is all in one place, for whoever does the work on this drive. Presumably, that person probably should be you, since you have all of the prior experience with working on these specific drives, ha. Maybe you should contact him directly. Thanks for joining in on the conversation! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctorclu Posted December 27, 2015 Share Posted December 27, 2015 (edited) My suggestion is this: There should be a new thread created for this Corvus DR Project. One that has all manuals, updates, DIP settings, and user-experiences with different configurations available in one place. Agreed, Fibrewire did a great job starting such a thread. It would be great to share what we learn in recovering the Star Raiders 2 source code from the Corvus drive and add it there for future projects. I'm a System Administrator, and have experience with disaster recovery. First, ! avoid using this drive ! until you have the right combination of people & equipment to do the job. An unplanned write or modification of anything on the disk can further hamper, or ruin later attempts to get the data off the drive, when you do, finally, have the right combination of people & hardware. A system administrator! Fantastic! Thanks for joining the conversation. We are looking to pool as many people as possible to help TheRedEye (who has the hard drive currently) and AJW (the creator of Star Raiders 2). I also like to put in a special thanks in all this to Savetz for coxing AJW in releasing this game in the first place. There are only a few people who could really have a great chance of doing a proper job of disaster recovery on this drive. The main problem is that they are geographically dispersed. They are: MetalGuy66, Warerat, FlashJazzcat, Bob1200XL, Candle, Sloopy, & myself. I'm sure there are a few others, but I know with 100% certainty that if all of those people were in the same room with an 800 system, the failed drive and at least two other known good Corvus drives, that there would be a very high likelihood of recovering the data. Clearly, Kyle22 & Fibrewire would also play a part in such an endeavor, due to their extensive familiarity with the drives. As well as other long-time Corvus users... of which, there are not a lot of! MG, Warerat, Candle, Sloopy, FlashJazzCat, Atari hareware guys. Sure invite them in. I'm sure they'd be happy to contribute their two cents. Bob1200XL, don't know as well, but always up for taking recommendations. You, a system administrator. Very cool. Love how you throw in Kyle22 and especially Fibrewire, people with ACTUAL Corvus experience, as an afterthought. I hope that we are able to resurrect this Very Important, Historic piece of code! Very much agreed. I've rebuilt mechatronics on these disks. What model? Capacity? Revision? And serial number? Certain disks have well-documented fail modes and specific fixes. Added: I also have all the service documentation, schematics, specifications, scope and test point waveforms, and an assortment of spare parts both new and used. Calibration and alignment procedures. Diagnostic software, roms, and all the other goodies for low-level operations. For all Corvus disks. Hopefully the HDA will never need to be opened and that simply proper operation and some TLC will suffice. Another person with Corvus experience awesome! Welcome aboard. I would argue the first order of business is to disable write functionality and determine HDA integrity. Then clone the surfaces. Work from the clone to complete logical recovery. I'm loving this idea as well. Also if we clone the surface, other copies can be made and all the people we've recommended throughout this thread could get a crack at seeing what they can do in recovering the source code information. Here is my question: How would the cloning process work? Would we need to locate similar hard drives (which I believe were MFM), or could we save the Corvus drive as a disk image and work with it from there? The idea of cloning the drive is honestly the best idea I've heard so far. I'm really starting to wonder about the disk image idea. Does Altirra (emulation) have the means to access a Corvus image? I've sent a message to Phaeron, the developer of Altirra, to see what is possible and an invite to this thread. A BRIEF UPDATE IN WHERE WE STAND ON THIS So far we have TheRedEye willing to accept help with the Corvus drive, but stated this is a busy time of year for his company. Understandable with this being the holidays and all. Corvus drive or not, AJW has found a print out of about 180 pages of the source code! He believes that the most update to date version of the source code would be on the Corvus drive. However, in a pinch, the paper copy is there. I've offered idea for him to take the paper copy to a copy shop, send me the copy (I'll pay for copy and shipping) and I can make a PDF file of the copy of the paper copy. I can also run the copy through OCR to get text and proof read the text. Granted, the copy shop could also make a PDF of the copy. TheRedEye and AJW they are willing to help and AJW expressed he would like to see the game further developed. We are just two days off of Christmas. Realistically in their mundane businesses they will probably be wrapping up the holiday season into late January. Be patient and give them some time. Pooling Corvus information in the meantime is about all we can do. If cloning at this stage will only work with similar hard drives, this would be a good time to hunt down similar hard ware. A 6 MB hard drive. Wow, those will be fun to find. Edited December 27, 2015 by doctorclu Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted December 27, 2015 Share Posted December 27, 2015 I moving the platters might be in the cards down the road, whoever is going to do it should probably make sure to start work on the ulpa fitration booth now..... not expensive but important to do... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UNIXcoffee928 Posted December 27, 2015 Share Posted December 27, 2015 ... The idea of cloning the drive is honestly the best idea I've heard so far. ... A 6 MB hard drive. Wow, those will be fun to find. Yes, however, if the drive controller or any other piece of the puzzle is non-functional you can't clone the drive until it's fixed. You can only clone a drive if you can access it, in the first place. Since it spins up, we know that the power supply works, electricity is getting to the drive, and the rotational servo works. Even still, it's worth it to check the voltage at the power supply to make sure that it's up to spec. The troubleshooting info that I specified is where you would start with a drive in bad shape, particularly one that's been sitting for decades. It's worthwhile to check for bad capacitors, burnt spots, disconnected cables, insect nests, and plenty of other visual things before turning on something like this. Once the drive is recognized & working, then you can & should clone the drive, before attempting any repair to the filesystem. After reading one of the manuals, it appears that Bad Block data is stored on a special section of the disk. This is a very good thing. This means that if you do have the exact model enclosure & associated controller, you can transplant the actual hard disk to the different controller enclosure, without fear of a corrupted bad block map. It's not this easy with modern drives! So, if someone has the exact same model, they can just swap the drive into the known-working controller-enclosure, and begin troubleshooting from there. This eliminates a lot of work that would need to be done, otherwise. At this point, you hook it all up, cross your fingers, boot, & hope that the drive is recognized. Then the first thing to do is to clone the drive. Bear in mind, that this will require a THIRD Corvus. After this disk cloning is complete, then you try booting off of it. There may still be Gremlins lurking though... you will likely need to change DIP switches, etc. At this point it MAY boot (off of the cloned drive). If it does, then YEAH! If it doesn't, you may still be able to access data from the diagnostics program, or set the drive up as an auxiliary second drive. This may or may not work, because it requires a firmware upgrade to have this functionality. ...and this will write to the disk. Probably not much of an issue on the CLONED drive, however, you will need ANOTHER known working Corvus to boot. See how it gets complicated... ha... There is one on ebay, here but you need to know the revision #. With all of this said, I think that Keatah is the man for the job, because he has all of this stuff laying around his shop. If he needs any help, I'd be happy to help out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted December 27, 2015 Share Posted December 27, 2015 newer drives do kind of suck in some ways... after moving the platter you have to rework both the pcb's moving either one or two surface mount chips depending on the drive from the old to the new surrogate... the chips contain drive geometry and reassignment data.... That means hot air or infrared rework station, infrared being the better choice.... that being said... the newer drive is easier to recover after that's done because no writing to the disk should be needed or happen and you can pull the data to a final drive using software to fill in the blanks.... sound like Keetah may have done this before old drives.... you can recover the data but the boot/ track zero can be trashed, good news it can sometimes be re written using the data from the exact same hard disk model and rev., you sometimes suddenly have a working drive again.... My money is on Keetah gets it done! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctorclu Posted December 27, 2015 Share Posted December 27, 2015 (edited) Yes, however, if the drive controller or any other piece of the puzzle is non-functional you can't clone the drive until it's fixed. You can only clone a drive if you can access it, in the first place. ... There is one on ebay, here but you need to know the revision #. With all of this said, I think that Keatah is the man for the job, because he has all of this stuff laying around his shop. If he needs any help, I'd be happy to help out. Awesome. Huh, a Corvus Drive for only $400, not bad. Keatah definitely sounds like a man who would have experience in Corvus hardware. If he is not in the area he can at least give help over video. Also interesting is if we need physical hands on, Fibrewire lives in Southern California while TheRedEye is in Oakland California. (Checks google maps) only a seven hour drive. We Atari guys are spread out. .. old drives.... you can recover the data but the boot/ track zero can be trashed, good news it can sometimes be re written using the data from the exact same hard disk model and rev., you sometimes suddenly have a working drive again.... My money is on Keetah gets it done! Same here. Keatah and Fibrewire both have equipment and experience. Do they have enclosures they are willing to lend towards this? Just long enough to swap drives fire up the drive, clone the information. - If not do we need to invest in the Corvus enclosure that UnixCoffee928 suggested on ebay? Do we need to pool donations to fly one of these two to Oakland, CA to work on the drive? Edited December 27, 2015 by doctorclu Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyle22 Posted December 27, 2015 Share Posted December 27, 2015 (edited) Bob lives close to Oakland, and (as we all know) is very good at what he does, so I would ask him. Also, when I was @ FTe, we had a Corvus, and I know how they work, etc. but it never had a problem, so I don't have any real troubleshooting experience with them. The Corvus I use here is the completely different OmniNet version, and I re-worked everything about it. The only original parts are the enclosure and power supply. I put an XPe thin client inside that runs APE Pro, and mounted an SIO2PC on the back panel. Edit: To clarify, the Bob I refer to is Bob1200xl Woolley. Edited December 27, 2015 by Kyle22 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UNIXcoffee928 Posted December 27, 2015 Share Posted December 27, 2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5cneCgNA9U Well, then, since Bob is in town, he's the dude you're looking for!. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctorclu Posted December 27, 2015 Share Posted December 27, 2015 (edited) Bob lives close to Oakland, and (as we all know) is very good at what he does, so I would ask him. Also, when I was @ FTe, we had a Corvus, and I know how they work, etc. but it never had a problem, so I don't have any real troubleshooting experience with them. The Corvus I use here is the completely different OmniNet version, and I re-worked everything about it. The only original parts are the enclosure and power supply. I put an XPe thin client inside that runs APE Pro, and mounted an SIO2PC on the back panel. Edit: To clarify, the Bob I refer to is Bob1200xl Woolley. Bob Woolley! That name I know. Yeh would be great if we can get him on this. As for the Corvus mods, hey, you had to modify it to work in a way you liked. Well, then, since Bob is in town, he's the dude you're looking for!. Absolutely! Edited December 27, 2015 by doctorclu Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyle22 Posted December 27, 2015 Share Posted December 27, 2015 ... As for the Corvus mods, hey, you had to modify it to work in a way you liked. Yes, but please know that had it been a "real" Corvus, I wouldn't have touched it. It would be connected via the PIA ports as intended. The OmniNet drives are not Atari compatible, so I didn't mind tearing it up, and now I have a cool looking Corvus box that is functional. Maybe someone could build an OmniNet (3 wire) interface for the Atari using a PIC or Arduino... That's an idea for a new topic. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+bob1200xl Posted January 3, 2016 Share Posted January 3, 2016 I have been talking to a guy that used to work at Corvus and he is willing to help. He does not know the Atari version, unfortunately, but he does remember many of the generic details about the systems. Can we start a new topic on this? There should be some decent manuals for these drives. Do we have them? Bob 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctorclu Posted January 3, 2016 Share Posted January 3, 2016 Sweet! Doing a quick search for manuals which some of the other previous mentioned Corvus users might have more of, here is what I also found: Not the 6 MB version, but other Corvus hard drive products: The Omni Drive ftp://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/corvus/service/7100-05687_Corvus_OmniDrive_Service_Manual_Oct84.pdf The 11 MB Drive http://www.manualslib.com/manual/955860/Corvus-11mb.html?page=82 Another 11 MB Drive http://www.textfiles.com/bitsavers/pdf/corvus/corvus_11-20mb_8inch_svc.pdf This one says Corvus System B-Series 5.25 Inch 6-Megabyte Disk Drive Service Manual http://www.textfiles.com/bitsavers/pdf/corvus/7100-04703_B-Drive6mbSvc.pdf And I'll keep looking. Glad you could get some help for this Bob! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctorclu Posted January 3, 2016 Share Posted January 3, 2016 Bob and all, Per Bob's request, I've started a new topic for the source files from the Corvus drive here: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/247482-corvus-recovery-thread-star-raiders-2-related/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+bob1200xl Posted January 16, 2016 Share Posted January 16, 2016 Aric found some SRII diskettes in his garage... He thinks the 4-4-85 disks are current. Bob D1_11_5.atrD1_SRC_4_4_85.atrD3_A_11_5.atrD3_B_11_5.atrD3_SRC_4_4_85.atrSR_Design_Fix.atr 11 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Savetz Posted January 16, 2016 Author Share Posted January 16, 2016 Here are the SR II Design Document and Program Notes, from Aric's disks, converted to PDF, formatted, and spellchecked. StarRaidersIIProgramNotes.pdf StarRaidersIIDesignDocument.pdf 12 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snicklin Posted January 17, 2016 Share Posted January 17, 2016 Here are the SR II Design Document and Program Notes, from Aric's disks, converted to PDF, formatted, and spellchecked. Very interesting to see some of the optimisations made to speed up the rendering. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctorclu Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 Aric found some SRII diskettes in his garage... He thinks the 4-4-85 disks are current. Bob D1_11_5.atrD1_SRC_4_4_85.atrD3_A_11_5.atrD3_B_11_5.atrD3_SRC_4_4_85.atrSR_Design_Fix.atr Wow! great work everyone! So have we compiled a version of the game from the 4-4-85 code? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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