Sord M23 mk III - 5.25" SSQD 100tpi

HxC Floppy emulator support for all others computers...
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arjoll
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Joined: Thu Jan 15, 2015 5:03 am
Location: Invercargill, New Zealand
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Sord M23 mk III - 5.25" SSQD 100tpi

Post by arjoll »

I'm looking at buying an HxC for a Sord M23 mk III - I have two of these machines, both with dual floppy cabinets (FD20), but two of the four drives are playing up. The computers seem to be rare enough that there are no sources of images online, and no easy way to get binary data on and off them, so I figured that imaging what I have should be a priority.

The FD20 has two Teac FD-50C full height, single sided, 100 tpi ("quad density" apparently) drives, seems to be a standard Shugart interface, and they use a simple straight-through cable to the controller cartridge and drive select switches on the drive to select drive 0 or 1. There are handwritten notes in the service/troubleshooting manual showing settings for drive 2 and 3, but I am not sure how they are supported.

I have had a look through the forum, and the only reference I can find to Sord is for an 8" drive in a far newer Future32 machine - ironically I have technical details for the Sord 8" format which may have been useful. I've had a play with the HxC software, and believe I have managed to create the correct raw image.

Specs of the format is: 5.25", single sided, soft sectored, 80 tracks (0-79), 100 tpi, 16 sectors, 256 bytes/sector, 250kbps, 300 rpm, 1:2 interleave (I think - tracks are numbered 1, 9, 2, 10, 3...).

My questions (I hope they're not too dumb) are:

* Do I have enough details of the disk format to have a fairly good chance of being able to create an image that I can format and use on this system? Because it's a 100tpi format, I'm not going to be able to just throw a disk in a PC drive and image it as a starting point.

* If I get one of these, I'd want to be able to initially jumper it as a single drive (the second drive, drive 1 in Sord terminology) - can I disable one of the virtual drives in the HxC while I do this?

* For my purposes, is there any difference between the C and F revisions? I can't work out what the difference is, other than the packaging!

Thanks
Andrew

fbal
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Feb 02, 2015 1:30 pm

Re: Sord M23 mk III - 5.25" SSQD 100tpi

Post by fbal »

Hello,

I saw several posts from you in different forums about SORD M23. I'm located in France and might be able to get a SORD M223 Mark III but without any disks. At the same time (having spent a lot of time on internet looking for information), I found a German guy who has a working SORD M223 (http://www.edvsoft.de/oldcomputer.shtml) with external winchester 10Mb hard drive and several floppy disks, including OS and BASIC (he sent me some pictures of the floppy disks available, he has got as well the original user manual). I have been discussing with him to get some copies.

I would like to know what kind of floppy disks I should use? Is it OK with 5"1/4 HD 1.2MB (formatted on his SORD)? What would be the OS commands to create systm disks and to copy other disks?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Franck

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