2.8" QD Disk Emulation

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Randel
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Re: 2.8" QD Disk Emulation

Post by Randel »

Jeff wrote:
Mon Apr 29, 2019 10:48 am
The frequency of QD disk is well above the 22khz (this generally something around 100Kbits/s). i am not sure that the tapuino can deal with this.

Anyway i have now something working to dump/write and simulate QD disk drives (and ANY others kind of floppy disk drives :wink: ) without any issue. :D
This floppy simulator/reader/writer is based on a de10-nano board and a buffers piggy-back board. This one will be sold by Lotharek.

I can right now make some QD disk dumps. Let me know if some of you are interested to send me some disks.
Are you continuing to have success with this? Is there a release date for the product?

Thanks!

Randel
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Re: 2.8" QD Disk Emulation

Post by Randel »

Jeff wrote:
Tue Apr 02, 2019 12:47 am
Rogee wrote:
Tue Apr 02, 2019 12:08 am
Is 10 pin more difficult as 32 or 16 to handle.

I have a question : When i will release something for the QD emulation, do you think that you will able to make the specific ribbon (wiring,soldering,...) or are you waiting for something "plug & play" ?

I will make any cables necessary. I am also happy to help with further development, troubleshooting or support.

Thanks!

Jeff
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Re: 2.8" QD Disk Emulation

Post by Jeff »

Randel wrote:
Tue Jun 11, 2019 6:50 pm
Jeff wrote:
Mon Apr 29, 2019 10:48 am
The frequency of QD disk is well above the 22khz (this generally something around 100Kbits/s). i am not sure that the tapuino can deal with this.

Anyway i have now something working to dump/write and simulate QD disk drives (and ANY others kind of floppy disk drives :wink: ) without any issue. :D
This floppy simulator/reader/writer is based on a de10-nano board and a buffers piggy-back board. This one will be sold by Lotharek.

I can right now make some QD disk dumps. Let me know if some of you are interested to send me some disks.
Are you continuing to have success with this? Is there a release date for the product?

Thanks!
Yes. Most of the product is already there since this is based on a de10-nano board. The piggy-back board prototype is quite simple to make if you are able to solder some ic on a board.

Randel
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Re: 2.8" QD Disk Emulation

Post by Randel »

Fantastic!

Do I get the piggy-back board from you, or do you have Gerber files?

How do I get your code to the de10?

Thanks.

Jeff
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Re: 2.8" QD Disk Emulation

Post by Jeff »

Randel wrote:
Wed Jun 12, 2019 7:35 pm
Fantastic!

Do I get the piggy-back board from you, or do you have Gerber files?

How do I get your code to the de10?

Thanks.
I have currently no gerber ;) :
20190612_235007.jpg
20190612_235007.jpg (194.25 KiB) Viewed 13468 times
(less buffer ic are needed if you only want only QD Disk emulation.)

have you a de10-nano board ?

Randel
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Re: 2.8" QD Disk Emulation

Post by Randel »

I will purchase a de-10 if you are confident that QD emulation has a good chance of success.

Will you be able to share your code?

Thank you.

Jeff
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Re: 2.8" QD Disk Emulation

Post by Jeff »

Randel wrote:
Thu Jun 13, 2019 2:14 am
I will purchase a de-10 if you are confident that QD emulation has a good chance of success.
I will publish some videos to show you ;).

(btw which machine to you plan to use with this ?)
Randel wrote:
Thu Jun 13, 2019 2:14 am
Will you be able to share your code?

Thank you.
The binary / bitstream yes, but why do you want the code ?

Randel
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Re: 2.8" QD Disk Emulation

Post by Randel »

I have 3 Akai S700 samplers, and 1 X7000.

I'm a little concerned about the cost of purchasing several of the DE-10 Nano boards, and the potential cost of a final product. It seems like an immensely powerful solution to store a trivial amount of data.

Is the read/write speed really <100kbps?

Jeff
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Re: 2.8" QD Disk Emulation

Post by Jeff »

Randel wrote:
Thu Jun 20, 2019 7:48 pm
I have 3 Akai S700 samplers, and 1 X7000.

I'm a little concerned about the cost of purchasing several of the DE-10 Nano boards, and the potential cost of a final product. It seems like an immensely powerful solution to store a trivial amount of data.

Is the read/write speed really <100kbps?
This is the same cost as an SD HxC Rev F even maybe lower.
If you have money issue then you will have to wait for the rpi zero version. I will work on this once the gotek firmware is stabilized (quite soon i hope :wink: )

(yes the bitrate is for sure 104kbps. to compare DD 3"1/2 disk is 250kbps and HD 3"1/2 is 500kbps.)

Jeff
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Re: 2.8" QD Disk Emulation

Post by Jeff »

A question :

Someone here know if there are some double-sided QuickDisk drives able to read both sides without the need to manually invert the disk ?
Currently all QD drive models appears to be single-sided to me...
This is important to specify the QD image file format i will use.

luovuus
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Re: 2.8" QD Disk Emulation

Post by luovuus »

After my research the only doublesided peripheral I've found to exist and is described here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triton_di ... d_Spectrum
http://live.worldofspectrum.org/infosee ... ash/21#104

Most of the devices are single sided as used in Famicom/Akai/Korg/Roland/Yamaha/Smith Corona/Casio among other devices.

Jeff
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Re: 2.8" QD Disk Emulation

Post by Jeff »

QuickDisk Interface to Shugart Interface adaptor (To use with the HxC Floppy Emulators supporting the QD emulation).
QD_to_Shugart.png
QD_to_Shugart.png (44.89 KiB) Viewed 12941 times

hjalfi
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Re: 2.8" QD Disk Emulation

Post by hjalfi »

Hello --- at the risk of being a little off-topic, I have a project which is essentially the exact opposite of the HxC2001; it's a very cheap USB floppy drive controller capable of reading images from floppy drives. http://cowlark.com/fluxengine/

I would like to support QD drives, so the information here is really useful for determining how to drive them. (Also, the FluxEngine can probably easily handle generating flux images files for consumption by the HxC.) However, the drive I've been asked to support is a 12-pin Mitsumi drive from an electric typewriter, which is not the 10-pin version described here. It's also not the 12-bin Famicom pinout. As this appears to be the only place on the internet where people have heard of QuickDisks... has anyone heard of these?

Also, a question about Jeff's schematic: my understanding is the QuickDisk drives need an external input to trigger a disk scan. This is /RS, connected to the Shugart STEP output, right? Does the drive generate any kind of signal to indicate that the disk has been completely read, or is it up to the drive controller to know how much data to expect?

Jeff
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Re: 2.8" QD Disk Emulation

Post by Jeff »

hjalfi wrote:
Tue Aug 06, 2019 9:34 pm
Hello --- at the risk of being a little off-topic, I have a project which is essentially the exact opposite of the HxC2001; it's a very cheap USB floppy drive controller capable of reading images from floppy drives. http://cowlark.com/fluxengine/

I would like to support QD drives, so the information here is really useful for determining how to drive them. (Also, the FluxEngine can probably easily handle generating flux images files for consumption by the HxC.) However, the drive I've been asked to support is a 12-pin Mitsumi drive from an electric typewriter, which is not the 10-pin version described here. It's also not the 12-bin Famicom pinout. As this appears to be the only place on the internet where people have heard of QuickDisks... has anyone heard of these?

Also, a question about Jeff's schematic: my understanding is the QuickDisk drives need an external input to trigger a disk scan. This is /RS, connected to the Shugart STEP output, right? Does the drive generate any kind of signal to indicate that the disk has been completely read, or is it up to the drive controller to know how much data to expect?
Hi,

Here it is my reverse engineering results on a Thomson QD90-128 / Kanto Denshi QDM-01 QuickDisk drives :

Code: Select all

--
-- QD90-128 / QDM-1 / Akai MD280 Quick disk signals description 
-- (C) 2019 Jean-François DEL NERO / HxC2001 Floppy Emulator project.
--
-- DB9 Connector: (QD90-128)
--   /MS /WP /MO /RS  WG
--    1   2   3   4   5
--
--       6  7   8   9
--     GND /WD /RY  RD
--
-- Internal connector :
--  - (1-Brown) /WP - (2-Red) /WD - (3-Orange) WG - (4-Yellow) /MO - (5-Green) RD - (6-Blue) /RY - (7-Purple) /MS - (8-Grey) /RS - (9 White) VCC5V - (10-Black) GND -
--
-- (O AL) 1 (7) MS : /Disk Present (Simple switch to gnd + 4.7Ko pull up)
-- (O AH) 2 (1) WP : /Write Protect (Simple switch to gnd + 680o pull up - Lock the write-gate if asserted)
-- (I AL) 3 (4) MO : /Motor ON     (Motor on trigger signal on falling edge - Motor stopped by the stop motor switch if MO not asserted OR if WG is asserted )
-- (I AL) 4 (8) RS : /Reset        (Stop motor if /MO not asserted + clear ready)
-- (I AH) 5 (3) WG : Write Gate    ( If WG is asserted the motor seems to stop at the stop motor switch even if /MO is asserted ! No write occur if the drive is not ready (/RY) and the /Write protect is asserted )
-- -----  6 (10) GND
-- (I AL) 7 (2) WD : /Write Data   ( Falling edge )
-- (O AL) 8 (6) RY : /Ready - Enabled if /MO is asserted and pass the rd head sw signal. Cleared at /RS or when passing the stop motor switch
-- (O AH) 9 (5) RD : Data Read
--          (9) VCC (5v)
--
So yes, you need to "launch" the motor and wait the Ready signal to read a full track.

Jeff
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Re: 2.8" QD Disk Emulation

Post by Jeff »

And the different pinouts in the VirtuaQD Quickdisk emulator documentation may interest you too :

http://www.2a03.jp/~norix/virtuaqd/file/manual.pdf

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