On Sun, Jun 11, 2023 at 9:29 AM Tony Duell via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
> However I am not sure if I'll be able to use it. There is one very > important thing missing : DOCUMENTATION. The 'wikii' on github is > ridiculously incomplete. There is no user manual or man pages. The > software source in python (a language I've never used) has very few > comments and is not clear at all. > > It's not clear to me exactly what all the options are for, and when to use > them. > > -tony > I also got one ion the hope I'd be able to read a 1.44MB dos floppy that may or may not have some useful software on it. It installed and ran without issue on Linux but, like Tony, I'm finding the documentation a bit short. And I don't know much python either though I do find it fairly readable. I have tried the examples that do exist and they work as described. It's not clear though yet how to proceed though in the simplest case I think it has provided me with a 1.44MB image of a test floppy. Using it for non-DOS floppies may be more difficult but the main reason I'm unsure is that it's fairly quiet about what it does and I don't know yet how much recovery work it's done unbidden. I do believe the greaseweazle firmware includes some of the retry mechanism and may 'just work'. Note that the test floppy I'm using is easily readable. However, while I was waiting for the board, I looked around for software and as well as that recommended by the designer I also found some called fluxengine. This was written for a different adapter - actually a Cyprus dev board connected directly to a floppy socket, not a custom board, but it supports the greaseweazle adapter and only lose part of the functionality. I haven't investigated the documentation on that yet but it's very well presented and I have hopes that I wil be able to use it too. I'd recommend looking at it - it was very little trouble to get working. I didn't try it on Windows but it has support for that. https://github.com/davidgiven/fluxengine I think there were a couple of recommendations for greaseweazle here so I guess someone's found it useful before. I'm interested in any hints - if you send any to tony please cc me. Although Tony seems to have resolved his Windows problems, it did occur to me that this could be paired with a raspberry pi or clone to make a self-contained device with little cost or effort. -adrian