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IBM 5363 System 36 trying to reformat disk and install SSP 5.1

The specific track format and CRC poly are only specified for the defect list, which IBM didn’t use anyway. Even among IBM controllers there are breaking changes, the 5364, ps2, and RT all use different sync bytes for example.
 
Of course! What was I thinking! Various IBM groups would do incompatible things just because they could. I know that the Austin RS/6000 team didn't want to do anything with any of the Boca Raton PS/2 teams. Waste of resources. :-/

BTW, with my SMD/ESDI emulator you will be able to "format" the image. I just haven't gotten to that point yet as it requires understanding what the individual controllers are doing. Right now I'm just focused on getting the disks themselves emulated. Fingers crossed, I'll have the SMD emulator working by EOY24.
 
I will also check on my side for à tool that could format in 256 bytes. I could do it on my PC as well with my wd1007a

I saw something like TPC 3000 if I remember correctly
 
ggs said:
BTW, with my SMD/ESDI emulator you will be able to "format" the image. I just haven't gotten to that point yet as it requires understanding what the individual controllers are doing. Right now I'm just focused on getting the disks themselves emulated. Fingers crossed, I'll have the SMD emulator working by EOY24.
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Please subscribe me to your newsletter. :-)
 
I'm picking up the model 80 this weekend. It works, and has at least DOS on it, so hopefully I won't have to do much "fixing" of it to get it working enough.
I have a 5363 ESDI disk drive in a machine that I think is good, or good enough to be able to read from it, which should tell me the proper sector size (I'm saying 256bps because someone here said that, I don't know myself until I look). If I can I'll read the first tracks off of it for the UDT layout and so on, and that should give us the info needed to "unformat" your re-formatted disks. Hopefully.
 
I think Chris will get there before Guy.
I've been hearing about Guy's disk emulator project for 20 years now.
Chris is to the point where he's reading IBM ESDI sectors.
 
Al Kossow said:
I think Chris will get there before Guy.
I've been hearing about Guy's disk emulator project for 20 years now.
Chris is to the point where he's reading IBM ESDI sectors.
Click to expand...
I’m nearing code complete. I’m hoping to start testing (with a test framework) in a month or so.
 
Just to manage expectations I'll point out that I am only working on a disk reader/controller at the current time, not an emulator. That being said, thing are progressing well. Right now my focus is on handling relocated blocks and adding more formats. Writing/formatting a disk will be the next big hurdle.
 
In the case of my 5364 I know a good bit:

The address area is 8 total bytes: 0xFE sync byte, 2 bytes cylinder (big endian), 1 byte head, 1 byte sector, 16 bit CRC (poly=0x1021, init=0xffff)
The data area is 263 bytes: 0xF8 sync, 256 bytes data, 48 bit ECC (poly=0x100b0001100b, init=0xffffffffffff)

Not every physical sector is used, for one thing it looks like they use just 64 sectors per track (this 0667 disk has 66 hard sectors when switched for 256 byte sectors). Then some sectors are marked with a sector address = 0xff. So I guess those are spares.
 
Still working on it but I had to take a couple of months off. Verilog code is probably ~50% complete (largest piece is the AXI4 interface). I have to gack and modify some of the already written software because I had to make some significant design changes once I started writing the verilog code.
 
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