ABBUC e.V. Forum

Hello everyone,

Last week issue #146 of Abbuc magazine arrived here. The magazine itself looks ok, but the floppy disks are a bit peculiar.

For one, they don't seem to have an Abbuc label like the previous issues.
Then, the disks themselves seem to not work. I can display their directory, but trying to boot them makes the drive motor start and stop at regular intervals. No boot error but it seems to be taking an age to do something. I tried to read the disks with copier programs like copymate but it too seemed to produce a lot of errors and taking an unreasonably long time to read a full track.

So, did anyone else get this?

Also, I've been trying to get in touch with skr since the start of November without success. I sent my subscription renewal via bank transfer and I just wanted to make sure he got the money. Does anyone know something perhaps?

Thanks for any replies.

.
Hello ggn

Due to paper shortage, the label for magazine #146 will be send along with magazine #147.

Sincerely

Mathy

Ich hab die Disketten bisher nicht getestet. Jedoch hatte ich noch nie eine defekte ABBUC-Diskette in meinem Postkasten.

ggn hat geschrieben: ↑

30.11.2021 18:48

I sent my subscription renewal via bank transfer and I just wanted to make sure he got the money. Does anyone know something perhaps?

I hope @8Bitjunkie can answer this, he is the treasurer of Abbuc.

You can send him a PM.

I guess 8bitjunkie cannot answer, because he is in the hospital.

I wrote a message to the other members of the Abbuc board, if skr does not reply, maybe someone else does...

Hello,
the members list leads exclusively Skr. I therefore contacted him.

The floppy disks Labs for 146, are delivered with the magazine 147 after.
There was a shortage of raw materials in the printing press.

What kind of floppy is used. A 1050 or XF with Mitsumi or Chinon drive? We had some Hard Sectored empty disks. I tried one of them on my XF (Mitsumi) and it worked. Could it be that a Chinon drive is having problems? Hard-sectored disks have 18 index holes.

.
Hello guys

Oops, I guess ggn got one of the hard sectored disks. Start-stop-start-stop is what you get when you put a hard sectored disk in a 1050.

Sincerely

Mathy

Yellow_Man hat geschrieben: ↑

02.12.2021 18:22

Hello,
the members list leads exclusively Skr. I therefore contacted him.

Hi Yellow_Man,

I'm faced the same issue.
My membership is obsolete since 10/31/21, but I´ve paid in advance for the next 2 years a month ago.
It would be great, if you could ask SKR for updating this, because I got no response on all Email last time.

Thanks,
andY

Hello guys,

Thanks for the replies and sorry I didn't reply here earlier.

Regarding floppies, this is exactly what Mathy described: start/stop/start/stop. For the record, I tried this on a XF551. From the sound of it, hard sectored disks can't be reformatted to work on the drive?

Sad to hear 8bitjunkie is hospitalised. Wishes for a speedy recovery. And also I hope SKR surfaces.

Again, many thanks for the replies, they are very appreciated.

Hi ggn,
are you able to download the ATRs from here and write their contents to floppies of your own?
https://abbuc.de/download/magazin-146-diskseiten-1-3/

Hi DjayBee,

Yes, I have already downloaded the images. I was just asking if I can write the images on the disks supplied, given how much grief they give the poor XF551 just trying to read them. I don't know much on the subject but "hard sectored disks" to me sound that the drive won't be able to format them. I can always use some spare floppies and write the images to those, so no biggie in any case.

I'll probably bust out the Fujinet and XF551 and experiment.

Thanks

.
Hallo ggn

"Hard sectored" means the sectors are always in the same place on the disk. They are somehow physically placed on the disk. "Soft sectored" means that the drive determines where the sectors are placed on the disk. If I understood correctly, on a soft sectored disk, the sectors can be in a different place and order each time a disk is formatted.

Sincerely

Mathy

Hello,

For what it's worth: my XF551 cannot even begin to format the hard sectored disks. So for now I'll just write the downloaded images into 4 single sided disks (sadly I don't have a perforator to punch a hole for side 2 write protection to the disks).

At least I learned something new .

Bye for now - and I hope SKR will be back soon with us...

AFAIK hard sectored disks have as many index holes as sectors on a track.
Therefore every drive which pays attention to the index pulse will go crazy with these.
Since the 1050 has no index detection, it should not have problems with these disks but the XF551 uses a more or less standard disk drive and most certainly will check for the index pulse.

Yes, that's pretty much the behaviour my XF551 exhibits with those disks - starting and stopping every 1-2 seconds. I wonder why is that, perhaps it's some safeguard in the firmware that stops the motor if it encounters index pulses too soon.

Now I wonder if anyone has a working 1050 for sale .