Implementation,
2019
My
design is based on
a
SoC/FPGA environment as the DE10-Nano board.
Currently,
the ST506, ST412 and ST225 disks are
supported
. I decided to use the DE10-Nano
Development
Board, configurated with an
Altera
Cyclone® V SoC FPGA
, Typ: 5CSEBA2317 and with integrated ARM Cortex-A9 CPU
.
In my design, the MFM data are completely decoded in Real -Time,
effectively "on the fly" and stored on a Micro-SD card.
Therefore a simple HEX-Editor for example can be used for viewing
the received data.
DE10-Nano
board with attached MFM Emulator Interface
|
Notes,
information, problems and solutions
The
interface and the corresponding signals were described in detail
by the company Seagate and were widely respected.
It
looks quite different at data and timing format. Everything here
is incompatible. Each manufacturer has guaranteed implemented his
own track and data format which was genarated with their own
low-level format program. The following differences exist:
>>
CRC algorithm is different, such as different preset value.
>>
Track format: ID AM differently.
>> Track format: DATA
AM differently.
>> SYNC character differently.
Even
the same manufacturer, for example, DEC. There were different
formats used . A disk , formatted with the RQDX-1 controller Disk
could not be used in a RQDX-3 environment. To be able to save the
data of a still functioning disk, the Clone Mode was also
implemented. The data from the disc will be 1:1 transfered and
then saved to the SD-Card. In the Emulator mode the data will be
read from the SD card and the disc is emulated.
Further,
very detailed information can be found here
and
in the
usermanual
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