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Rework some of the Brother documentation.
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@@ -14,10 +14,12 @@ Apparently about 20% of Brother word processors have alignment issues which
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means that the disks can't be read by FluxEngine (because the tracks on the
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disk don't line up with the position of the head in a PC drive). The word
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processors themselves solved this by microstepping until they found where the
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real track is, but normal PC drives aren't capable of doing this.
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Particularly with the 120kB disks, you might want to fiddle with the start
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track (e.g. `:t=0-79x2`) to get a clean read. Keep an eye on the bad sector
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map that's dumped at the end of a read.
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real track is, but normal PC drives aren't capable of doing this. Particularly
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with the 120kB disks, you might want to fiddle with the start track (e.g.
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`:t=0-79x2`) to get a clean read. Keep an eye on the bad sector map that's
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dumped at the end of a read. My word processor likes to put logical track 0 on
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physical track 3, which means that logical track 77 is on physical track 80;
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luckily my PC drive can access track 80.
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Using FluxEngine to *write* disks isn't a problem, so the
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simplest solution is to use FluxEngine to create a new disk, with the tracks
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@@ -30,7 +32,7 @@ If you find one of these misaligned disks then *please* [get in
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touch](https://github.com/davidgiven/fluxengine/issues/new); I want to
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investigate.
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Reading discs
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Reading disks
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-------------
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Just do:
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@@ -41,7 +43,7 @@ fluxengine read brother
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You should end up with a `brother.img` which is 239616 bytes long.
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Writing discs
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Writing disks
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-------------
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Just do:
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@@ -53,6 +55,27 @@ fluxengine write brother
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...and it'll write a `brother.img` file which is 239616 bytes long to the
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disk. (Use `-i` to specify a different input filename.)
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Dealing with misaligned disks
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-----------------------------
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While FluxEngine can't read misaligned disks directly, Brother word processors
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_can_. If you have access to a compatible word processor, there's a fairly
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simple workaround to allow you to extract the data:
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1. Format a disk using FluxEngine (by simply writing a blank filesystem image
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to a disk). This will have the correct alignment to work on a PC drive.
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2. Use a word processor to copy the misaligned disk to the newly formatted
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disk. The machine will happily adjust itself to both sets of alignments.
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3. Use FluxEngine to read the data off the correctly aligned disk.
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I realise this is rather unsatisfactory, as the Brother hardware is becoming
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rarer and they cope rather badly with damaged disks, but this is a limitation
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of the hardware of normal PC drives. (It _is_ possible to deliberately misalign
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a drive to make it match up with a bad disk, but this is for experts only --- I
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wouldn't dare.)
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Low level format
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----------------
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@@ -60,14 +83,6 @@ The drive is a single-sided 3.5" drive spinning at not 300 rpm (I don't know
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the precise speed yet but FluxEngine doesn't care). The 240kB disks have 78
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tracks and the 120kB disks have 39.
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The Brother drive alignment is kinda variable; when you put the disk in the
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drive it seeks all the way to physical track 0 and then starts searching for
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something which looks like data. My machine likes to put logical track 0 on
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physical track 3. FluxEngine puts logical track 0 on physical track 0 for
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simplicity, which works fine (at least on my machine). If this doesn't work
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for you, [get in touch](https://github.com/davidgiven/fluxengine/issues/new);
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there are potential workarounds.
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Each track has 12 256-byte sectors. The drive ignores the index hole so they're
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lined up all anyhow. As FluxEngine can only read from index to index, it
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actually reads two complete revolutions and reassembles the sectors from that.
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@@ -138,7 +153,8 @@ mcopy -i brother.img ::brother.doc linux.doc
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```
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The word processor checks the media byte, unfortunately, so you'll need to
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change it back to 0x58 before writing an image to disk.
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change it back to 0x58 before writing an image to disk. Just run
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`brother240tool` on the image again and it will flip it back.
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The file format is not WP-1, and currently remains completely unknown,
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although it's probably related. If anyone knows anything about this, please
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