eberger@godot.psc.edu (Ed Berger) (01/17/90)
This was part of thread regarding making backups of protected commercial in which some asked about the "hardware" type copiers, and got a response from marcus saying that the Cyclone hardware copier (supposedly included with X-CopyII) does in fact work well. I decided to look into this as my 2 nephews , ages 5 & 3 terrify me when they are near my Amiga software. Pinout of Cyclone Hardware as given by marcus@uk.ac.pcl.mole ------------------------------------------------------------ >not connected f02, f09, f11, m16, m17, m22 >connected f16--m09, f17--m02, f22--m11 >one to one all the rest male DB23 = m female DB23 = f >There you go, I guess it makes the drive always ready to receive data so the >software can completely control it. Anyone technical care to expand? Lets see... The male connector plugs into the amiga drive port and the female accepts the external drive. Copying can only be from the internal drive to the external drive. Read data is connected directly to the external drive's write data. The amiga does not send any data to the external drive. The external drives index pin connects to the diskchange signal. The amiga's select drive2 line is connected to the external drive's write enable. The external drive's head step, and other signals are normal. I'd guess that the software simply tells the internal drive to read the disk track by track, looks at the external drive's index signal and at the right time tells it to write, which allows the read signal from the internal drive to go directly to the write head on the external drive making a direct copy of the data onto the disk. Since the amiga is not processing the read data before it goes to the external drive, it can't limit what is written. The diskchange signal and the select drive2 signal are direct connections to 8520 chips, which the programmers probably have experience programming. I suppose the parallel port could also be used for those signals, as in the "Synchro-Express" copier. Of course you'll have to take out this interface to have a normal df1: You could mount some switches on the drive and have both a normal and a copy position. Someone could probably write a PD diskcopier that used the same type of hardware interface. X-CopyII is listed as $28 from GO-AMIGO. I'll probably order it and see if this works. Though as I've seen no Ads for X-CopyII, I don't know if it has the right software or not, or if this hardware pinout is correct, or if it really works on those products that Project D doesn't. -Ed Berger eberger@b.psc.edu
cmcmanis@stpeter.Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) (01/18/90)
There is a company in Oakland Caifornia I believe called "Trace"
they make a hardware box that will copy any disk, quickly too!
It has replaceable heads that will let you copy 5.25" or 3.5" disks
and it will make exact copies at a rate of over 100/hour! That is
less than a minute a disk. Wouldn't you like to have one of these
puppies at your next "user" group meeting! It is a bit pricey, the
low end model costs about $5,000 but if you sold the copies of the
disks you made, lets see ... at $5 a copy, somewhere there was a
message about disks going for $.62/disk that's $4.36 profit, say
$.06 for a label you could pay off the cost with only 1163 disks!
And at 100/hr you could do this in just under 12 hours! Such a deal.
You could even make copies of your friend's disks for them. You
never know when you might need 20 or 30 backups of "Shadow of the Beast."
--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcmanis@Eng.Sun.COM
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.
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