not exactly the point I was trying to make. pretty clearly a TPDD1 cannot use an HD floppy. but a small microcontroller that speaks TPDD protocol and has integrated FDC function could interface with a modern FDD. ..steve
On Sat, Mar 20, 2021 at 8:20 AM Jeffrey Birt <bir...@soigeneris.com> wrote: > High density disks, both 3.5 and 5.25, require a much higher flux level to > write. A system designed for DD disks will not be able to write to them > reliably. Some folks have tried HD 3.5” disks in an Amiga or Mac for > example only to find that it reads for a while but after a few weeks or > months it no longer does. You can generally write to lower density disks > with a HD drive. The exception being that it is best to write 360K > 5.25”disks with a 360K drive as the head on these drives was physically > larger and the narrower track written by a higher density drive may not > work well on all 360K drives. > > My take on the TPDD is that it was designed to be cheap (simple) and > portable. Thus, they used a simple 8-bit micro to control everything and > not one of the floppy disc controller ASICs that were available at that > time. But, they wound up with something that would run on AA batteries and > use standard media at the time even if the storage capacity was limited. > > > > Jeff Birt > > > > > > *From:* M100 <m100-boun...@lists.bitchin100.com> *On Behalf Of *Stephen > Adolph > *Sent:* Saturday, March 20, 2021 5:59 AM > *To:* m...@bitchin100.com > *Subject:* Re: [M100] TPDD service manual > > > > this is quite interesting, and nice detective work. > > It would seem like an interesting use case here could be to modify this > firmware to make it target a standard 1.44MB floppy disk drive. > > Maybe it would seem a bit backwards because SD cards are more mainstream, > but still interesting to think about. > > > > I see you have the disassembly in place. > > >
