Hi Warren, The enclosure would still only work if the laptop motherboard had a regular floppy controller chip, and I'd be surprised if any have included one in the last 5 years. The actual floppy drives themselves are pretty dumb, so it's all about what you've got them connected to. There are some modern USB-based low-level floppy solutions, designed for software preservation, but they'd be overkill for most SAM use (and cost 50GBP+).
I'm a bit fuzzy on the details of the Trinity SD card format, but I think it's pretty much the same BDOS format used by the Atom interfaces (perhaps using Atom Lite byte ordering). I remember there being an issue with some cards not using 512-byte blocks, so it might be best if Colin filled you in on compatibility. Of course, you'll be working with the plain Atom emulation on the SimCoupe side, as it doesn't emulate the Trinity interface. SAMdisk supports BDOS devices too, so you can list, get directory listings of, and copy to/from individual records. If you already have a Trinity-format SD card, try a samdisk list from a command prompt, to see if the media is recognised. If you're on Vista or Win7 you'll need to have launched the command prompt with Administrator rights too, to have permission to open the raw disk devices – the same applies to SimCoupe using them, for now. Si On 5 Apr 2011, at 13:11, war...@wdlee.co.uk wrote: > Thanks for the fast reply! :-) > > I suppose in theory, an internal-type drive in an enclosure would be > plausible, but by the time you get to that, and the rarity probably of even > enclosures for something like that and the added drivers, it defeats the > purpose. Oh well... Worth finding out! ;-) > > On an alternate route, I wonder if Colin could create a small PC program that > would allow transferral of .dsk files to the allocated slots on a Trinity > formatted SD card? Though again, I have no idea how plausible, as it would > depend on the way the Trinity formats and stores things on the SD card. > > Obviously it wouldn't make sense to have Sim Coupe emulate the Trinity, as > the point is to have a device that people want to buy because it allows their > SAM to do something they can't possibly emulate. But a .dsk transfer utility > to and maybe from the Trinity SD cards might be useful? Just thinking out > loud! ;-) > > Then again, a completely nutty route... Since the Trinity will very possibly > have FTP at some point, file transfer could be done in a round about way, by > uploading or downloading files lol! So in theory, if you don't have a handy > built-in floppy drive, you could develop in Sim Coupe, upload to your > website, and then download to the Trinity. Sorry Colin, my ponderings are > jumping all over the place lol! ;-) > > Quoting Leszek Chmielewski <retr...@gmail.com>: > >> The USB Floppys have a extremly cut down controller which is missing ability >> for low level access. So the answer is no. My Acer TM312T has a external >> parallel port Disc drive, and it can read and write Coupé Discs, only >> because the BIOS. It would be possible to make a USB Floppy which can use >> SAM discs, but not in a standard way. And it would also need new drivers. >> >> 2011/4/5 <war...@wdlee.co.uk> >> >>> Just as a side issue, with regards to Sim Coupe... (sorry for the quick >>> change of topic!) >>> >>> This is probably a daft question, as I think I've read about the issue >>> elsewhere, so forgive me... but is there no way to read/write to external >>> USB floppy drives? Just thinking of my own case, and others are probably >>> similar, where I use my laptop 99.9% of the time these days (and of course >>> modern laptops don't have a built-in floppy drive. >>> >>> Not to mention, there are increasingly fewer desktop systems that include >>> floppy drives these days anyway, so even people using desktops are >>> increasingly likely to find it easier using external plug-in drives. >>> >>> Is it a complete impossibility? ;-) >>> >>> Quoting Simon Owen <simon.o...@simcoupe.org>: >>> >>> >>>> On 4 Apr 2011, at 16:02, Simon Cooke wrote: >>>> >>>> If SimCoupe uses rdtsc without setting the CPU thread affinity, there are >>>>> issues on some systems where it loses track when the thread is scheduled >>>>> onto another CPU core. Usually a bios update can fix this, or switching to >>>>> use QueryPerformanceCounter. >>>>> >>>> >>>> It did use QPC, but only for sub-system profiling within the emulator. >>>> That was becoming increasingly meaningless with multi-core systems, so I >>>> stripped it out a couple of months back! Knowing the running speed and the >>>> framerate should be more than enough for most users. >>>> >>>> I remember taking special care of the issue in my floppy driver, where >>>> even kernel QPC could use up using different timestamps on some systems
