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Home Forums 68kMLA Write 800k Floppies? — #23
Post #23 by lee4hmz
Source Forum68kMLA
CategoryHardware
Post DateFri, 6 Jun 2008 - 21:55
Original URLhttps://68kmla.org/bb/threads/write-800k-floppies.13336/
Post
One kind of curious thing is that if my understanding is accurate, the 37C65 already has the functionality of the 92C32 built into it, so why the separate 92C32? I suspect that the VCO and the XP9103 are in some way used to control the motor speed of the floppy disk.
Sort of. The 92C32 and the VCO are there so the card can set an arbitrary bit rate (the 37C65 only supports the standard FM/MFM rates). That way, it can read 800k disks without changing the motor speed; PC floppy drives are built like HDDs, and are locked to a certain speed (usually 300 or 360 RPM). It's also, most likely, using the XP9103 as a cheap substitute for a DAC (I don't have a have data sheet handy for it, so this is pretty much a WAG...) to control the VCO.

The Deluxe Option Board actually uses a similar trick, though they used a UMC data separator instead of a Western Digital.

-lee

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