Debugging write operation to disk drive

ALTO DISK TOOL

I had to drive over and swap cars with my daugther, hers has problems. After lunch, I got back to the project. I continued to map out test points to figure out why the WriteSector, which looks so good on the logic analyzer, failed to write on the actual disk (or wrote something so bad it remains unreadable).

The easiest spot to probe is the terminator, using micrograbbers on the resistors, but I had to have an accurate map before I could be sure I caught the right signals.

Terminator with points to capture connector signals

The terminator I used for the picture is not the same one used for either the prototype or production driver board. The positions are the same but there are more or less resistors on the other terminators.

I fired up the system with the scope capturing the WriteGate and WriteData&Clock signals, freezing when WriteGate first goes active. I see the write commanded and the transitions begin occurring, but the results when reading are still checksum errors on all three records in sector 0.

At this point there are two possibilities I see - the writing is not taking place due to some failure inside the Diablo drive, or I am writing something but what is read back isn't valid format. To decide between these, I will set up the logic analyzer to capture the incoming record on a read and will look to see what appears.

I had to reinstrument the signals output to the logic analyzer, plus I tweaked the startup of the transition FSM to give a 2 us delay from asserting WriteGate before I began issuing the clock and data transitions. This matches a recommendation in the Diablo manual. There is also setup time changing the logic analyzer configuration to match the emitted signals.

When the bitstream was ready I tested again. The goal here was to do a ReadSector and see what comes in from the sector that I just wrote (I think). If the data is like the last captured garbage, then I am not writing on the surface at all. If the data looks close to what I (attempted) to write, then I can debug how I write to get a clean read.

My test didn't meet my objectives because of a flaw in the instrumentation that meant I didn't have a good way to trigger at the beginning of a sector read, however I could do some other tests with the oscilloscope while executing WriteSector.

I stuck one scope probe on the read data line coming in from the drive and the other was triggering when the WriteGate was asserted. What I should see is an absence of data pulses after I began, since I would be writing almost 337 us of zero bits before emiting a sync word. Instead, the data bits continued to stream in even after my write began.

Since ReadGate is hardwired on, it is possible that the mechanism won't sync up until it sees a long stream of zeros, but once I wrote my preamble one time, that should have existed. Still, it could be a sync issue due to the permanent ReadGate. I don't have signal wires in the main cable to drive the ReadGate pin, but I think I can engineer up a twisted pair to add this to my test setup.

Another issue, however, is definitely a flaw in my logic that I have to chase down. Even though I tracked the bits being emitted yesterday and it was all good, what I saw from the WriteData&Clock line when I wrote was an excellent pattern of zeroes and the sync word at the magic time, but then I saw the wrong data bits following - not the two words of 0000 and the checksum of 0151, but something else.

I did make the seemingly minor change to add the 2 us delay before I began emitting clock pulses and asking for data bits. I don't see how that could cause a problem with the data being produced, but somehow the data being fetched is wrong.

I resynthesized to correct the instrumentation error, so I could read what was coming in from the sector. I might be writing wrong data with bad checksums, although it is equally likely that I am not truly writing. We shall see.

The addition of the ReadGate wiring to the fpga will involve wiring up a level shifter, removing the jumper on the terminator and wiring in the twisted pair I cut to match the length of the exiting cable. This will take careful work which I will do tomorrow. Instead,I will focus on what I can read back from the sector that I have written.

When I ran my test with a valid trigger condition, I found that the data coming in from the surface was not what I thought I was writing. It might be the residual junk already there, but my write logic looked wrong from my earlier scope work.

I think the next two things to do are to wire up the ReadGate signal including the level shifter/driver circuit, and to go back to capturing my transitions from the logic analyzer. I will add a channel that is the received WriteData&Clock line from the terminator, to check that it corresponds to what is sent to the level shifter. Both of these can't be done in the remaining time this evening.