osborne 1

[jonnosan]

Has anyone successfully used the floppy emulator on an Osborne 1?

The pinouts listed in the Osborne 1 tech manual (page 37 / 7.3 "DISK CONTROLLER AND PINOUTS") are not standard.
The most obvious difference is that whereas a standard shugart pinout has all odd pins being GND, the O1 has +12v on 11,13,15,17 and +5v on 21,23,25. That could be worked around easily enough by just snipping out those wires.

But pins 6 & 34 are also different - the O1 labels these as EARLY/LATE rather than the standard 6 being NC and 34 being READY.

I have a O1 in storage that I got from ebay and was never able to boot (whether due to bad drives or bad disks) so am interested in trying the HxC SDCard Floppy Emulator but want to know whether it's a lost cause.

Cheers

Jonno

[Jeff]

Has anyone successfully used the floppy emulator on an Osborne 1?

The pinouts listed in the Osborne 1 tech manual (page 37 / 7.3 "DISK CONTROLLER AND PINOUTS") are not standard.
The most obvious difference is that whereas a standard shugart pinout has all odd pins being GND, the O1 has +12v on 11,13,15,17 and +5v on 21,23,25. That could be worked around easily enough by just snipping out those wires.

But pins 6 & 34 are also different - the O1 labels these as EARLY/LATE rather than the standard 6 being NC and 34 being READY.

I have a O1 in storage that I got from ebay and was never able to boot (whether due to bad drives or bad disks) so am interested in trying the HxC SDCard Floppy Emulator but want to know whether it's a lost cause.

Cheers

Jonno

The "EARLY/LATE" seems mean that there are a PLL into the original ffloppy disk drive. Do you have the schematic of the Osborne ?

[jonnosan]

Do you have the schematic of the Osborne ?

There are schematics in the technical manual, which can be downloaded from http://bitsavers.org/pdf/osborne/osborne1/

[Jeff]

Do you have the schematic of the Osborne ?

There are schematics in the technical manual, which can be downloaded from http://bitsavers.org/pdf/osborne/osborne1/

Thanks.
This should works without problem. Just leave "EARLY" "LATE" (the write precomp controls lines), TG43 and CLOCK unconnected. The HxC Floppy Emulator don't need them.

[jonnosan]

Thanks

I have placed my order, will report back once it's arrived and I've tested it out

[Jeff]

Thanks

I have placed my order, will report back once it's arrived and I've tested it out

Of course be very with the power supply lines present on the floppy cable

[lotharek]

and I confirm Your order was posted

[jonnosan]

Just to explain why no update - my osborne 1 let out the magic smoke before I put the emulator in

[Jeff]

Just to explain why no update - my osborne 1 let out the magic smoke before I put the emulator in

Dead capacitors ?

[guenner]

This post is old but the right topic

Is there anyone who can explain how I am able to read a disk with an Osborne 1? (SD)

In my documentation I found this facts:
Osborne 1 Format (102kByte)
SSSD 40Tracks, 10 Sectors a 256Byte
Standard FM

or

204k
SSDD 40 Tracks, 5 Sectors a 1024Byte
MFM

I only get errors if I try to boot or read from a selfmade HFE-file (made it from a .td0 with the batch converter)

Thanks,
Thomas

(I own the Lotharek SD-Card-Drive)

[Jeff]

You may need to activate the double step support. This can be done into the embedded menu on the emulator (remove the sd, press select).

[Jeff]

Support directly done on the guenner's Osborne 1 at the Classic Computing 2015 .
So to make it works, just don't connect the SIDE signals. For some reasons this signals coming from the Osborne is switching randomly. Since this machine seems to support only single-sided drive, don't connect this signal is not an issue.

SAM_0257.jpg (181.7 KiB) Viewed 28618 times

(Note : Double step setting is NOT needed with this machine)

[guenner]

I'm really happy about my working Osborne with the HXC Emulator.

Very many thanks to Jeff's work yesterday and of course the last years! This is really important support for our community.

Thanks,
Thomas

[EDIT] This is the list with the osborne1, where the status have to be changed to "Working": https://hxc2001.com/download/floppy_dri ... upport.htm

[redruM69]

Hi guys. Sorry to bump an old thread, but there isn't much info on this.
I'm going to attempt this shortly, and wanted to verify my adapter pin configuration.



From what I have gathered, most everything is straight through, with the power supply lines disconnected. The only pin that's different is pin 10 on the Osborne going to Pin 14 on the floppy drive (Drive select 0).

Is this correct?

Thanks!

[redruM69]

I gave it a try today. Found that I needed to swap the disk select pins around.

Updated cable diagram:


It's working great! I'm using a cheap Gotek floppy emulator flashed with the HXC firmware.