Re: Floppy Disks
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. There were fix utilities available to forcibly sync them, and I believe modern systems should use more reliable time sources. Nasty stuff though! Si
Re: Floppy Disks
This is becoming more of an issue, with Macs and newer desktops not having a motherboard floppy controller, and more widespread use of laptops... Almost all USB floppy drives are usually limited to 720K (9-sector) and 1.44M (18-sector) formats. They contain their own floppy controller chip, and the LBA to CHS mapping is done within the unit. Unfortunately that means there's no way to access the 10th sector on regular SAM disks. SimCoupe relies on being able to talk to the floppy controller directly, using my fdrawcmd.sys driver under Windows or the kernel fdrawcmd interface under Linux. I have been thinking about support for USB floppy drives in SimCoupe, working within the 9-sector limitation of USB drives. It would require disks to be prepared for access on a real machine (or using SAMdisk), so SimCoupe can recognise them as special, and to reserve the 10th sector on each track to prevent data being saved there. On the SimCoupe side, the 10th sector in each directory track would be faked as holding the same reserved/hidden files. The disk could then be used as normal on both SAM and SimCoupe sides, but with 702K rather than 780K available for data. Nowadays it's probably easiest to use an Atom Lite interface on the SAM side and share a CF card between SAM and SimCoupe (or indeed a Trinity and SD card). It gives a centralised store of all your work, and avoids the reliability issues with floppy disks – just be sure to back it up periodically in case you lose it! Si On 5 Apr 2011, at 12:19, war...@wdlee.co.uk wrote: 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? ;-)
Re: Floppy Disks
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
Re: Floppy Disks
Thanks for that, Simon! It certainly would be nice to be able to use the external floppy drives these days, since, as you said, the normal internal kind seem to be dying out. Though as you said, easier now with cards... Just to show my ignorance... from what you're implying, can a Trinity SD card be read to and written to from Sim Coupe already then? I'd just automatically assumed it wouldn't be compatible immediately. :-D Quoting Simon Owen simon.o...@simcoupe.org: This is becoming more of an issue, with Macs and newer desktops not having a motherboard floppy controller, and more widespread use of laptops... Almost all USB floppy drives are usually limited to 720K (9-sector) and 1.44M (18-sector) formats. They contain their own floppy controller chip, and the LBA to CHS mapping is done within the unit. Unfortunately that means there's no way to access the 10th sector on regular SAM disks. SimCoupe relies on being able to talk to the floppy controller directly, using my fdrawcmd.sys driver under Windows or the kernel fdrawcmd interface under Linux. I have been thinking about support for USB floppy drives in SimCoupe, working within the 9-sector limitation of USB drives. It would require disks to be prepared for access on a real machine (or using SAMdisk), so SimCoupe can recognise them as special, and to reserve the 10th sector on each track to prevent data being saved there. On the SimCoupe side, the 10th sector in each directory track would be faked as holding the same reserved/hidden files. The disk could then be used as normal on both SAM and SimCoupe sides, but with 702K rather than 780K available for data. Nowadays it's probably easiest to use an Atom Lite interface on the SAM side and share a CF card between SAM and SimCoupe (or indeed a Trinity and SD card). It gives a centralised store of all your work, and avoids the reliability issues with floppy disks – just be sure to back it up periodically in case you lose it! Si On 5 Apr 2011, at 12:19, war...@wdlee.co.uk wrote: 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? ;-)
Re: Floppy Disks
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
Re: Floppy Disks
That's great, thanks! I'll try that with my Trinity SD card later... The main thing I'm interested in, is being able to create stuff in Sim Coupe on my laptop, and just get it onto the real SAM for testing with ease. So if it's possible through the Atom emulation and/or SAMdisk, that'll do the job! When I get the chance to test it, I'll post back and let you know how it worked. :-) Thanks for all the help! Quoting Simon Owen simon.o...@simcoupe.org: 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