Re: Floppy Disks

2011-04-05 Thread Leszek Chmielewski
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

2011-04-05 Thread Simon Owen
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

2011-04-05 Thread warren

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

2011-04-05 Thread warren

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

2011-04-05 Thread Simon Owen
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

2011-04-05 Thread warren
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