Re: Dark Crystal and Time Zone

[Linards Ticmanis <ticmanis@gmx.de>]

On 01/20/2011 06:33 AM, sicklittlemonkey wrote:

>> KryoFlux
> 
> Hmm, new to me. Does it work well?

So far, yes. You just connect it to a standard PC floppy drive via a
standard PC floppy cable, plug it into the USB of your PC, power up the
drive with an external power supply, and use a simple command line tool
to read your disks in any of various formats to an image in one of
various common emulator disk image formats, including .DSK and .PO for
the Apple II. Among the image formats there is also a low-level format
suitable for archival purposes, which you're invited to upload to the
SPS ftp server; the SPS guys promise to eventually convert the uploads
to their own IPF format (which is supposed to handle all kinds of copy
protection and is best supported by Amiga emulators as of now) and send
it back to you. They obviously don't release the images to the general
public for copyright reasons, but I assume nothing would stop you from
uploading your own IPFs you get back from them to the usual sites such
as Asimov etc. What doesn't work is reading your copy protected disk
into an image and having it work in an emulator right away without going
through SPS; they say it's because it takes some human analysis, but I
guess it's also because they want to add the images to their own archive.

I have successfully read Apple II, PC, Atari 8-bit, Macintosh, Commodore
8-bit and Amiga floppies with it. Works like a charm both in Windows 7
and in Ubuntu (both 64 bit in my case); in Windows you have to install a
driver, but it's not a kernel mode driver, so there is no problem with
the driver signing requirements of Vista & Co - all you have to do is
confirm the installation of an unsigned driver once during the install
process.

They have a forum at www.kryoflux.com (scroll down to find the link),
and the developers have been quite helpful answering lots of questions.

However there is no write support yet in the current (beta) software
version, and while they say they plan to release source code for the PC
side software, it won't happen until the software is out of beta. As to
when that will happen, it's anybody's guess. The source code for the
device firmware will probably not be made public, according to the
developers, so you'll have to depend on them for fixes. Also I
personally find the software license a bit restrictive, it's a "no
commercial use, no reverse engineering" license with lots of legalese
mumbo-jumbo.

Also "flippy" 5.25 inch disks are problematic since KryoFlux needs an
index hole signal, even for Apple II disks and others that don't use the
hole natively. Some flippy disks have two pairs of sleeve holes for the
index hole; with these KryoFlux works fine by just flipping them over,
as usual. KryoFlux is also able read the back side of flippies in a
double-sided PC drive without actually flipping the disk, and it can
decode the "backward" data stream you get that way. But then there is
the problem that the upper head of those drives is offset from the lower
head by four tracks toward the center of the disk, to prevent
interference between the heads; thus the track 0 stop prevents you from
seeking to tracks 0 to 3 on the back side of a flippy disk, unless you
modify your drive.

So, to handle flippies that don't have the second pair of sleeve holes
for the index, you have two basic possibilities. You can actually flip
them over, or not. If you flip them over you need to either add a second
index sensor to your drive, or carefully punch a second set of holes in
your floppy sleeves to make the index visible where the drive expects
it, or remove the platter from the sleeve and read it in a sleeve that
has the second set of holes. If you don't flip them over, you have to
modify your drive to make it go 4 tracks (1/12 inch, about 2.12 mm)
lower than track 0. This means adding a transistor to bypass the track 0
sensor, moving the physical stop (not possible in all drives and might
take some work, filing off metal etc., in most), and waiting for a
KryoFlux firmware that allows activating the bypass transistor (the
hardware for this exists on the board, but the current firmware doesn't
use it).

By the way, batch #2 of the KryoFlux boards is "almost sold out"
according to one of the developers.

(I should really start writing novels.)
-- 
Linards Ticmanis