4032E Build

[radardoug2]

Its great to see you getting this together, good work, sorry about the lockdown! Stay strong!

[horizonsound]

Its great to see you getting this together, good work, sorry about the lockdown! Stay strong!

I'll get some pictures together this weekend, as I want to clean up all the wiring. So far it's working a charm. I have a program disk loaded, along with multiple blank reel disks. All copy functions are working as they should.

The lockdown has given me plenty of time to nut this out (over 5 months so far, and still another 4 weeks of hard lockdown to go).
Had to sneak out and buy some parts, under fear of being fined $10k.
But all this is nothing compared to the other crap I've had to deal with this year, so it's not too bad.
Missing gigs and recording though.

Anthony.

[Clip6]

Wow. Any hope for 3.5 replacement?

[horizonsound]

Wow. Any hope for 3.5 replacement?

3.5" would be dead easy. I have an SSL 3.5" drive, but also have a 4100A processor, so can not test it.

The 8" requires many stages of configuration from wiring, jumper settings, firmware and disk setups. The drives come in on a 40 pin, then split to 50 pin for each drive. It then needs to be converted back to 34 pin for the emulator.

It's such a strange feeling booting up the computer, and not hearing the clunk-click of the drives.

Anthony.

[Clip6]

Anthony your a damn genus. 

If you set these up and sell them I'm in.

Many thanks for your time.

[horizonsound]

Here it is!

I simplified the wiring by eliminating the 40 to 50 pin board that the 8" drive unit uses - the 82E113 Floppy Interface Card which converts the incoming 40 pin S85E cable, to two 50 pin S86E cables.
Instead I built a custom 40 pin to 2 x 34 pin board so that both a Program and Reel emulator could be installed.

As I only have one emulator, I installed a switch, that selects between the Program or Reel disk. All disk images are stored on the USB. DISK_00.HFE is my Program disk, and DISK_01, DISK_02.... are the Reel disks.

Finally, it was much simpler to install all of the above in an excess 3.5" drive enclosure I had, as the 5v power was already present, and the emulator fits perfectly to replace a 3.5" disk.

Here's the video of how it all works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OBPD7AdiFs

Anthony.

[oyanliz]

Wow Anthony!!! You are the genius of SSL 4000 refurbishing!!

Amazing job!! Well done!!

Best regards!!

Oihan

[RoyMixer]

Very cool indeed! 

on the emulated drives, how much date per image? same as the 8"?

I'd love to do one of these
R

[horizonsound]

Yep, exactly the same as an 8" disk, 256K.
But you can have 1000s of disk images on a 1GB USB stick.

Next challenge is the 20MB Bernoulli.

Anthony.

[RoyMixer]

I'd like to do this too,   I have a konnektor with works well but is a but the target window has to be see too large for me which results in locations that are a bit random. also would be nice customize a little.

the UNO seems fast enough to  deal with tach and MTC well?

Roy

Hi all,

TR system is now fully functional. I received two trial boards, and after a bit of debugging, got it all working perfectly. Now to acquire a truck-load more 03 boards.

Today was spent developing a virtual tape machine to allow the DAW computer to work with the SSL computer.
The core is an ATMEGA32, using an Arduino Uno.

Seems to go OK, but needs some tweaking on the tach rates and switching logic.

[RoyMixer]

Which emulator did you choose to get?

Yep, exactly the same as an 8" disk, 256K.
But you can have 1000s of disk images on a 1GB USB stick.

Next challenge is the 20MB Bernoulli.

Anthony.

[horizonsound]

Hi Roy,

Yep, the Uno handles the tach and timecode fine. It can get a bit temperamental and needs to be reset occasionally.
The target window is usually within 0.5s

There is only one emulator about that works flawlessly, the Gotek. Loaded with Flashfloppy. You need to get the config file, disk image, and wiring / jumper settings correctly, which took a bit of trial and error to work out.
Mine is working perfectly now - set up with a single Gotek, manually flipped between Program and Reel.

Anthony.

[Clip6]

Anthony could you upload the config and image files needed to try this on a 3.5 system. Thanks

Think Roy might give this a go.

[RoyMixer]

I would like to try both kinds of emulators, I have a 4100C here.

[RoyMixer]

Also jealous of your work with the UNO and The SSL -   I hope to try this sometime

Hi Roy,

Yep, the Uno handles the tach and timecode fine. It can get a bit temperamental and needs to be reset occasionally.
The target window is usually within 0.5s

There is only one emulator about that works flawlessly, the Gotek. Loaded with Flashfloppy. You need to get the config file, disk image, and wiring / jumper settings correctly, which took a bit of trial and error to work out.
Mine is working perfectly now - set up with a single Gotek, manually flipped between Program and Reel.

Anthony.