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Floppy disc interface fell from the sky
Posted: Fri Dec 05, 2014 8:01 pm
by schombi
By pure accident I came across a floppy disc interface. The seller did not know what it was and I had just a vague feeling it could be something for the Dragon. Today the item arrived and when I opened the case, I spotted this:
- fdd1.jpg (83.91 KiB) Viewed 8283 times
I installed the interface on my Dragon 32, attached a floppy drive and switched on the machine
- fdd2.jpg (72.64 KiB) Viewed 8283 times
Without knowing anything I tried a DIR and there was a reaction on the drive! I searched the internet, found a DragonDOS manual and managed to format a DD disk with the command DSKINIT 1,1,80. Finally I wrote a short BASIC program, saved it to disc and loaded it successfully after a reset. More than happy. The price I paid was 1 GBP!
The label on the case reads DDI-1DR. Would anybody have more information on this interface and/or the SuperDOS? Where to find a manual? Thanks!
Re: Floppy disc interface fell from the sky
Posted: Fri Dec 05, 2014 8:53 pm
by robcfg
Nice!
I don't think we have that controller on the wiki. Could you make nice pictures (or better, 300dpi scans) of both sides of the case and the board?
Re: Floppy disc interface fell from the sky
Posted: Fri Dec 05, 2014 11:09 pm
by simon
COOL !!!!
£1 for a disk controller... don't get much better than that.....
/Simon
Re: Floppy disc interface fell from the sky
Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2014 5:32 pm
by schombi
Re: Floppy disc interface fell from the sky
Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2014 7:49 pm
by robcfg
Thanks for the pictures!
I'll create a wiki page for it and upload the pictures.
Is there any chance you could scan the interface and the pcb, or consider sending it to me so I can scan it?
Cheers,
Rob
Re: Floppy disc interface fell from the sky
Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2014 8:57 pm
by robcfg
I created
the wiki page, worked the pictures a bit and added some IC datasheets.
There's a couple of chips which I cannot read their numbers right. Could you please take a look and post all chip numbers?
Regards,
Rob
Re: Floppy disc interface fell from the sky
Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2014 9:53 pm
by schombi
Thanks Rob!
I will try my best and let you know.
I´m still struggling to understand what exactly SuperDOS is and how it is different to DragonDOS.
Re: Floppy disc interface fell from the sky
Posted: Sun Dec 07, 2014 4:53 pm
by zephyr
schombi wrote:By pure accident I came across a floppy disc interface. The seller did not know what it was and I had just a vague feeling it could be something for the Dragon.
Nice find!
schombi wrote:
I´m still struggling to understand what exactly SuperDOS is and how it is different to DragonDOS.
SuperDOS E6 "appears to be DragonDOS with about half the faults corrected".
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=4779#p10660
A copy of the DragonDOS manual (Introduction to Dragon DOS) can be downloaded from the archive.
http://archive.worldofdragon.org/archiv ... r=Manuals/
Re: Floppy disc interface fell from the sky
Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2014 9:53 pm
by schombi
Thanks Zephyr! Very interesting.
Scanning the board failed, the result just looked crappy. I made a few more photos. Hope this helps.
- IMG_1679.JPG (2.37 MiB) Viewed 8175 times
- IMG_1681.JPG (1.82 MiB) Viewed 8175 times
- IMG_1682.JPG (2.21 MiB) Viewed 8175 times
Re: Floppy disc interface fell from the sky
Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2014 1:31 am
by robcfg
Thanks for the pictures!
I could finally identify all chips, and updated the wiki page with their datasheets.
It's a pity the scans didn't go well. My recommendation is to use HP 36xx or HP43xx series scanners, they are absolutely top notch! In any case, if you'll be willing to send it to me via registered post so I can scan it and return it to you, I'll cover the shipping costs both ways.