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Exidy Sorcerer Floppy Disk Controller (Dreamdisk) Replica PCB

johnhalk

New Member
Joined
Sep 11, 2023
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6
We have successfully designed, built and tested a replica of the Sorcerer Dreamdisk FDC here in Australia. It based around a WD2793 FDC chip.
It booted successfully from a Gotek using an 80 Track DS/DD 720K .DSK Image.

The DreamBIOS CPM 2.2 uses ZCPR 1.6 CCP and is a very flexible CP/M as it can read over 100 CP/M formats including native dreamdisk, Osborne, Kaypro, TRS-80, Exidy 77 Track soft sector etc.


For your Sorcerer (48K RAM required) MK1 or MK2 - You need to install 2 x 2716 EPROMS with SCUAMONv3.4 monitor which has the Dreamdisk FDC cold boot support.
Replacing the factory Exidy monitor masked PROMS with EPROMS - You can just lift PIN 21 on the 2716 and jumper to PIN 24 (+5v).
You can also cut a trace and add a jumper on the sorcerer PCB if you prefer to plug the 2716 eproms directly into the IC sockets without the kludge above.

Also most Sorcerer's (MK1/MK2) have a factory fault on the PCB where PIN 6 (NMI signal) on the 50 way bus edge connector is not connected internally as there is a small 1mm pcb track missing. You need to remove the Sorcerer PCB and solder bridge a small link to an adjacent PAD to connect PIN 6 to the Sorcerer circuitry.

Apart from the above the rest is mostly plug and play.

Still not sure if these will be available as fully supplied kits (All parts, pcb, inc. eproms) or fully built. This will take some time to sort out.

Regards,
John
Melbourne Australia
 

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Last edited:
That’s correct. There is the write pre compensation setting which is only needed for 8” disks so not required to be set (WD test pad).

The data separator pulse duration (TG43 test pad) and VCO Frequency (DIRC test pad) need to be set with an oscilloscope.

Something like a PC based Hantek should be sufficient.

John
 
We are also looking at possibly adding HDD decode logic (Ports 50-5F) to add a WD1005 style HDD interface for the Sorcerer.
 
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