Work-In-Progress Reports for January 2010

31 January 2010

KryoFlux - Directory Creation: If enabled, DTC will create all directories of a path required for creating output dump files.

30 January 2010

KryoFlux - Track Limits: It is now possible to set the first and the last track to be dumped. It is not possible to set these values outside the permitted range for any specific image type (since programs won't be able to deal with that anyway) but it is possible to limit the track range used by images. Setting the start track can be also used to set the track to be used for calibration mode.

29 January 2010

KryoFlux - Calibration Mode: The track0 physical position can be set for either side of a disk through the command interface. E.g. set track offset for C64 disks on side 1. Read calibration mode: The host software, DTC, seeks to the first valid track that is being used by any of the images selected, then starts dumping it giving the usual feedback. This is useful for drive alignment; using a known good disk and setting the image type to the appropriate disk format. (more)

28 January 2010

KryoFlux - Target Track Number: The track number as expected by the target format is displayed too, so it's easier to see what C64 track is being dumped.

24 January 2010

KryoFlux - Command Line: Full command line support. You can read/write stream files, define any number of output formats, and a lot more. It is possible to convert already dumped stream files to any format supported; simply set device mode to stream. The number of revolutions to be sampled is defined by the disk format; the highest revolution count required by all formats specified will be used. (more)

23 January 2010

KryoFlux - Exporters: * Rewritten the main loop of the code as it was previously used only with test data; it is very close to final now. * Imaging to multiple files and formats at the same time now works. * Any step of dumping, analysing and imaging a track only happens when it is needed; already available data gets reused. * Added support for exporters without file association. (more)

22 January 2010

KryoFlux - Stress Testing: Continuous (stress) testing revealed certain cases that would still trip the algorithm matching exact index position inside the current flux transition period (as we said before index detection is very exact, and is not altered to match a new flux period at all, like other imaging solutions), mostly due to index information being OOB data - and can and in fact does appear pretty much anywhere in the stream if we try long enough. (more)

19 January 2010

KryoFlux - Misc, Warnings: - Very limited beta started, currently with one user to control the amount of bug reports and issues to deal with. - Fixed maximum track limit setting; it was set higher than it should have been. - Program messages now can be fully controlled; only information that has been selected would be output. - Changed track dependencies to allow a list of dependencies to be supplied; currently all of them have to be true (I.e. (more)

16 January 2010

KryoFlux - Error Reporting: Error reporting is very detailed now and any problem can be easily identified with the subsystem where it happened. All output is user configurable. Further error checks have been added to make the application more user friendly. Track limits of the KryoFlux device get reconfigured according to the physical/logical track relationship specified. Sector level error details are not available yet.

14 January 2010

KryoFlux - Exporters, Analysation & System Disk Image Support: Made the base export system fairly flexible, although the framework code is now fairly complex, adding a new format should require minimal code. Geometry It is possible now to describe a geometry for the format to be output by the exporter. The geometry supports fixed sized data (cutting or padding as necessary) as well as data size supplied by other subsystems. (more)

10 January 2010

KryoFlux - Misc: * Re-implemented flux reversal period to bit cell conversion. * Added bit cell to bit stream conversion. * Added CT "raw" export to the export system. Now the system is capable of the same as the original C code, but can be easily extended, plus handles all errors and other issues properly. (more)

7 January 2010

KryoFlux - Hardware Control Abstraction for Host: Created proper hardware control abstraction on the host side. Dumping works again. All error conditions as well as status reports and errors reported by the target device are fully handled. (more)