[Coco] Drive Wier 3: WARNING!

[N8WQ]

I will let you guys know how my USB to Serial adapter works as soon as I 
get my DW3 ROM and cable. Thanks to Boisy, I chose one with the FTDI 
chipset.

Alan Jones
 
-- 
N8WQ - Canal Winchester, Ohio
http://exwn8jef.googlepages.com/home



Boisy Pitre wrote:

> Tim, 

>

> Thanks for taking the time to make your post and sharing your findings.

>

> I want to echo what Tim is saying: there are some USB<->Serial 

> adapters that will mostly work, but not flawlessly with DriveWire 3.  

> There have even been cases where real PC serial ports failed to work 

> reliably.

>

> There's no hard and fast rule as to what will work or what won't but 

> apparently some ports are more tolerant than others.

>

> Regards,

> Boisy G. Pitre

> -- 

> Tee-Boy

> Mobile: 337.781.3570

> Email: boisy at tee-boy.com

> Web: http://www.tee-boy.com

>

> On Mar 24, 2009, at 8:21 PM, Tim Fadden wrote:

>

>> Ok, now that I have your attention! :-)

>>

>> I purchased an hdb-dos rom chip and serial cable from Cloud-9.  Ha 

>> yoo, it worked perfectly as advertised.

>>

>> My main reason for wanting it was in order to back up my coco os9 

>> hard drive system, and to make real floppies from images.

>>

>> The initial boot to os9 from DW3 worked flawlessly.

>>

>> I then created a new boot floppy from the drive wire image.  When 

>> booting the system from the floppy, it would immediately crash upon 

>> accessing any of the /x# drive wire virtual disks.

>>

>> Boisy Pitre and Robert Gault had this bug found and fixed in two or 

>> three days! yahoo  Now I can boot from a floppy, and access the three 

>> floppy drives, my hard drives, and the DW3 drives.

>>

>> I set off to do a backup.  Looked like it was working until in the 

>> morning when I checked the result.  Oh Oh! dsave got out of sync 

>> Whats this?

>>

>> Making a long story short, I was getting read/write errors on the DW3 

>> disks.  This was verry spiratic. only 3 to 5 random errors in 71 MB 

>> of transfer.

>>

>> After several days of testing, and eliminating possibilities I found 

>> the problem!

>>

>> The USB to Serial adapter was loosing data!  The 20+ year old 

>> hardware was working perfectly, DW3 was working perfectly!

>>

>> After going to a true RS-232 port on the pc, I have been able to do 3 

>> complete backups with 0 errors.

>>

>> That is a total of about 210 mega bytes, and over 21 hours of data 

>> transfer!  I have tested transfers from HD to DW3, and visa versa.

>>

>> *******************************

>> Bottom line is; if your using a usb-serial adapter and want to make 

>> 100% sure you getting clean data do a lot of testing!

>>

>> I don't know if it was the usb-serial module, or the drivers for it.  

>> It may be the individual module, or the chip set on it (prolific).  

>> As for me, I am sticking to a true RS-232 port.

>>

>> Any how its a hoot that the newest piece of technology was the one 

>> causing the problem!

>>

>> Thanks to all that helped me sort it out.

>>

>> Tim Fadden

>>

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>

>

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