[sebhc] USB for the H8?

[Dwight K. Elvey]

>From: "Lee Hart" <leeahart at earthlink.net>
>
>Deb and Glenn Roberts wrote:
>> The only real problem I have with the H8 is the reliability of the
>> old hard-sectored disk media and the H17 drives (having to clean
>> the heads a lot which presumably means the oxide is continuing to
>> erode)
>
>Same here. I am finding that more and more of my old 5.25" floppies are
>gradually dying. As you say, I have to keep cleaning the disk drive
>heads, so it's either that the oxide is coming unstuck, or that
>something is growing on them. What a surprise -- many are over 20 years
>old!

Hi
 That is partly why I've written the program I have. It copies
images of the hard sectored disk to the PC. These can then be
transfered to CDROMs or other storage media( preferably duplicated ).

>
>It's still not too hard to find blank 5.25" soft-sector disks, so I have
>been (slowly) copying my old H37 disks onto newer ones. Or, I can plug
>in a 3.5" floppy drive, and copy my H37 5.25" disks to 3.5" media. (I
>haven't done this, because it appears that 3.5" disks are LESS reliable
>than 5.25").
>
>But hard-sector disks are a real problem. You can't buy new ones, and
>you can't copy them to other media.


---snip---

 I've been thinking about setting up a punch to make 10 sectored
disk out of the pile of other floppies that I have. I have the frame
of one of those older drives that is cast. This makes a good
base to mount the punch and indexing. The drive is already designed
to hold the evelope and the disk so placing a punch in place of
the index detector makes sense. I'd put a wheel on the motor
side of the drive to make the indexed stops. I could either
have 10 stops and one hole or 10 holes and one stop. Having
one hole with 10 stops makes it easier to adjust each to be
just right. Still for space, if I drill the holes exactly,
one stop makes more sense.
 There are few places that still sell the hard sectored disks.
I've seen them on the web but I regret to say I didn't make
a bookmark.

 If someone is interested in my disk saving program, let me know.
You need a system with the LP serial port. I've only written
code for the 5-1/4 hard sectored disk at 48 tpi, 35 tracks. It has
only been tested on my H89 and a H90, with HDOS, so far. You'll
need a PC running DOS without windows in the way( boot to DOS ).
I'm not sure if it would work on a CP/M modified system but
don't know any reason it shouldn't.
 The program can be used to bring a system up from scratch or
simply make backups of disk currently on the system.
Dwight


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