| Author: | bluebirdpod (registered user: 28 posts ) |
|---|---|---|
| Date: | Thu, Sep 23rd, 2010 @ 10:43 ( . ) |
Pete's right about bending the arm that pushes down on the hub ring spindle. Some floppies are flattened out to the point they cause extra drag, and if the hub latch isnt tight enough it slips. I have also noticed that some floppies are so "tight" that it slows the motor down. A friend of mine who delivered magazines use to pull the disks out of old compute gazette's and some of them were to flattened out by the stacking or bundling process. He gave use a several hundred that we pulled the labels and notched them, or used a drive with switch to ignore write protect. Another strange issue I had with a supercard+ I had installed into a 1541 was with it being located DIRECTLY next to a 1702 monitor with the metal shielding removed. That caused all sorts of strange issues with the monitor bleeding RF into the drive, It would work sometimes then not others!, took me a while after moving it away from the monitor to figure out what was causing the drive to fail writing. Also lets not forget about the mold issue with floppies from more humid parts of the US or world, here in Denver we dont have this problem, But I had bought games from parts of the US and had lots of spots, and USUALLY you can use a Q-tip and strong alcohol and remove the mold, careful not to rub off the magnetic coating. It can happen to all kinds of floppies. I bought King's Quest series for a Apple2GS on 3.5's and wondered for years why they didnt load, well I found mold on all the floppies, the q-tip deally fixed all of them, and I had the ebay receipt and sure enough they were from the East coast-US. |
 | Author: | hyper active (registered user: 296 posts ) |
|---|---|---|
| Date: | Thu, Sep 23rd, 2010 @ 19:01 ( . ) |
and the only way I can find out if any of those things are true is if I download an old build of nibtools. Preferably the one built on august 22. |
| Author: | hyper active (registered user: 296 posts ) |
|---|---|---|
| Date: | Thu, Sep 23rd, 2010 @ 20:52 ( . ) |
this way I'll be able to tell for sure if the trouble I've been having after upgrading is just a terrible coincidence or the result of a bug that sneaked in. |
| Author: | hyper active (registered user: 296 posts ) |
|---|---|---|
| Date: | Fri, Sep 24th, 2010 @ 02:59 ( . ) |
Has anyone got a copy of nibtools 0.7.6? Thanks. |
| Author: | hyper active (registered user: 296 posts ) |
|---|---|---|
| Date: | Fri, Sep 24th, 2010 @ 03:29 ( . ) |
oops, it's the win32 version I'm after. |
 | Author: | Pete Rittwage (registered user: 558 posts ) |
|---|---|---|
| Date: | Mon, Sep 27th, 2010 @ 14:13 ( . ) |
If you could be more specific in *exactly* the behavior you are experiencing, I might be able to help. Vague descriptions such as "I was able to write a disk that worked and now it doesn't" is not helpful to me in finding bugs. |
| Author: | hyper active (registered user: 296 posts ) |
|---|---|---|
| Date: | Tue, Sep 28th, 2010 @ 03:12 ( . ) |
Ok, well previously what I've been able to do is to extract the raw tracks 1 through 35 of pirates!.nib, then extract track 36 from bangui-bob's patched up version, both through the use of the nibscan utility First I set the speed of the drive to about 290.51rpm and remaster the track 36 and get a truncation of about 25. nibwrite -S36 -E36 -R Then I remaster tracks 1-17 at about 295.xrpm. Then I do tracks 18-35 at a speed of 299rpm. When I try to load the game, it often sticks on tracks 14 or 15, or 15 and 16 and then it dies..... But I've been able to fix it up by rewriting it and varying the speed from 295.25 rpm, 295.11 rpm etc, and I'm able to get past that second sync check and onto the game. but with the latest nibtools version 472, Nothing I do can make the game get past that second sync check. I dont know if it's a bug thats krept in to nibwrite or nibscan and the way it extracts the raw tracks, but all I know is that The august 22 or august 21 release of nibtools was able to write it out properly, though it took a few attempts to do it. Nibtools v 472 however can't seem to manage it no matter how many times I try to do it. I've even tried it on different disks, and I know it's not a problem with the drive latch as someone suggested it was the other day. So this is why I need the older version so that I can eliminate all possibilities such as a dirty drive head or faulty power supply. If You send me nibtools version august 21 and I have the same problem, at least that will give me an idea of where the problem might be, IE, in the drive or in the software. Thanks, I hope that makes things clearer now. |
| Author: | Pete Rittwage (registered user: 558 posts ) |
|---|---|---|
| Date: | Tue, Sep 28th, 2010 @ 19:42 ( . ) |
I promise if you ever made one that passed the skew check it was by chance. You have probably 1 in 40 chance of hitting it since it expects the sector to arrive in the next 2 sync marks from where it bumps. You'll need an index hole sensor and/or a lot of time to get it to work. I promise there is not a magic version of nibtools where I removed functionality afterwards. I'll attach r435 which was checked in August 15th here to try. If you want to check out other versions, you can use the instructions on the NIBTOOLS page. I don't recommend this version for production use, as there have been several bugs fixed since this build. |
Attachments: |
| 1285717337_r435.rar |
| Author: | hyper active (registered user: 296 posts ) |
|---|---|---|
| Date: | Tue, Sep 28th, 2010 @ 21:56 ( . ) |
I tried the old release of nibtools r435 and Success! pirates works! Drive motor speed average: 295.36 RPM. Track capacity margin: 33 10.0: [raw/tr10.0d3] (3) (7810) (trunc:3) (fill:$55) 11.0: [raw/tr11.0d3] (3) (7810) (trunc:3) (fill:$55) 12.0: [raw/tr12.0d3] (3) (7811) (trunc:4) (fill:$55) 13.0: [raw/tr13.0d3] (3) (7811) (trunc:4) (fill:$55) 14.0: [raw/tr14.0d3] (3) (7811) (trunc:4) (fill:$55) 15.0: [raw/tr15.0d3] (3) (7811) (trunc:4) (fill:$55) 16.0: [raw/tr16.0d3] (3) (7810) (trunc:3) (fill:$55) 17.0: [raw/tr17.0d3] (3) (7811) (trunc:4) (fill:$55) Resetting drive... D:n435> the first sync check happens on tracks 25 and 26, this can be fixed with -bf. and tracks 14-15 is where the second sync check occurs, the only way to fix this is to get the speed correct, (see above). There is a 3rd sync check somewhere on the earlier tracks as well, this also depends heavily on your drive's speed. I haven't the foggiest idea what the problem is with nibtools r467 and above, I'll have to do some more experimentation, though I've noticed the speed detection seems a tad more sensitive, and there is severe truncation even after adjusting the speed to 295.x rpm, and when I say severe, I mean truncation at about 40 or 50 maybe this is an avenue worth investigating. Thanks once again for the help |
| Author: | Pete Rittwage (registered user: 558 posts ) |
|---|---|---|
| Date: | Tue, Sep 28th, 2010 @ 22:15 ( . ) |
A capacity margin of 33 is huge! That is the average number of bytes that can be written on a track and read back. This is usually between 0-15 on all of my drives. 33 means your disk drive is way out of whack somewhere. Either your belt is going bad, motor is going bad, or something. It should be very similar from track to track. |
| Author: | Pete Rittwage (registered user: 558 posts ) |
|---|---|---|
| Date: | Tue, Sep 28th, 2010 @ 22:18 ( . ) |
Send me the output of the part which calculates your motor speed. |
| Author: | Pete Rittwage (registered user: 558 posts ) |
|---|---|---|
| Date: | Tue, Sep 28th, 2010 @ 22:21 ( . ) |
You also never mentioned you were using the "hidden" raw mode before. :) |
| Author: | hyper active (registered user: 296 posts ) |
|---|---|---|
| Date: | Wed, Sep 29th, 2010 @ 01:53 ( . ) |
Hehe, sorry about that confusion. |
| Author: | hyper active (registered user: 296 posts ) |
|---|---|---|
| Date: | Wed, Sep 29th, 2010 @ 02:07 ( . ) |
ok, I need to fess up to you about something. I dont have a speed controlling dial on my drive, instead every time I want to slow the drive down, I push on the underside of the disk, then keep adjusting my hands and retrying the nibwrite command until I get a satisfactory speed, heheh. It works pretty well for the most part. I successfully wrote out a couple of v-max titles this way. Times of lore, defender of the crown and 3 stooges. Remember If I want to put in a speed limiter on my drive I can't do it myself as I am vision impaired, and I haven't found any detailed instructions on how to do so. If I had the instructions and diagrams I could simply get my computer guy to put it in for me, like he did with the parallel interface. |