[Coladam] Re: help

[Ron Mitchell]

Hi James

I have your message, and I'm going to have to do a little research and get 
back to you. Sound on the emulator setup has always been problematic. Some 
IBM's it works on, some it does not. On my Acer laptop, for example, that 
ADAM sounds like it's got a very bad cold. I've never played with the 
settings in Marcel deKogel's configuration setup, so I'll have to check it 
out. (hopefully before Chicago). Maybe in solving my problem I can help with 
yours.

As far as the disk drive is concerned - It runs in my mind that any piece of 
standard IBM-world  drive mechanics will work with that controller, but 
there are some where the jumper settings had to be played with to make it 
happen. Memory fades. Again, I'll have to get back to you, and this one 
might have to wait for brighter minds at the 'con (Dale, or Rich Clee ....) 
It strikes me that there were some wiring changes around the "disk in place" 
switch, and that standard drive mechanics required some re-wiring before 
they would work.

You're right. It's highly unlikely that all of those disks would be bogus. 
Could be the drive, or it could be the "interleave" settings in the 
conversion process.

For example
When I take a 3-1/2 inch floppy disk that works on my ADAM, and make a disk 
image of it using DCOPY, that image will not work on the emulator. It has to 
be run through the CONVDISK utility, to adjust the number of tracks per 
sector and the interleave value. On the ADAM floppy, the tracks per sector 
are 18, and the interleave value is 4.  To work on the Emulator, the tracks 
per sector value has to be changed to 8, and the interleave value to 5. 
Then, the damn thing will work.

So it all depends on what type of 5-1/4 inch floppies you're trying to 
convert. Standard 160k Adam floppies are supposed to work without 
adjustment. Anything other than that requires CONVDISK adjustment. You might 
want to check out Guy Bona's utility page for programs that will do all this 
for you.

Re the Mitsumi drive, I'm not sure. I have a 3-1/2 inch MicroInnovations 
drive, but I'm never pulled it apart to see what's inside. Things around 
here don't respond to well to me pulling them apart. If they're working - 
these days, I tend to leave them alone.

Let me see if I can find out more about the emulator sound.


I'm taking the liberty of sending your message and this reply to the ADAM 
list.  Somebody else might have an idea or two.
Ron

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "James De Carlo" <james at decarlo.ca>
To: <bytehacker at shaw.ca>
Sent: Friday, July 07, 2006 8:48 AM
Subject: help


> hi ron,
>
> sorry i didn't make it to the chat. had to go into town to see the
> real-estate agent about the building i'm going to be be renting for my
> second school.
>
> was playing a bit on the real adam and on the emulator. still trying to
> get sound working on the emulator. set the blaster variable in my
> config.sys file (win2k) and now the emulator detects it but no sound.
> for all i know though i have the jack plugged in the wrong port on the
> soundcard. will double-check that tomorrow. not urgent but would be nice
> to have something other than the pc speaker.
>
> now, onto disk images.. i finally got to the box of disks that david
> cobley sent and can't for the life of me make an image of any of them. i
> get the same read error on all of them though i tried various formats as
> listed on marcel dekogel's site for adam disks. *none* of them work. i
> find it difficult to believe that all of the disks would be duds. i can
> however consistently make images with my disks. suggestions?
>
> mi floppy controller - would really like to put this thing to use. idiot
> that i am, i went and threw out the mechanically dead drive that was
> with it, though i swore i'd put it away. i'd been using it to make sure
> the controller itself still works. i have reason to believe it does but
> i am currently without a functional adam disk drive. i'm wondering if a
> real adam drive would have better luck reading those disks..
>
> has anyone successfully gotten a standard mitsumi 3.5" drive to work on
> these? all these jumpers and not a single &!"$ing piece of documentation.
>
> on the subject of the disks that david cobley sent me, one of them has
> piqued my curiosity. it's labelled smartlogo plus 2.0 . would you have
> any clue what that is? a google search of course turns up nothing.
>
> james
> -- 
> James De Carlo <james at decarlo.ca>
>
>