Getting a GoTek floppy drive emulator working

So here's a slightly odd post, why am I playing with GoTek floppy emulators? Well, I rediscovered my Amstrad CPC6128 8 bit computer from the '80s and wanted to try some software downloaded from various sites.

The Amstrad CPC6128 has a floppy port (34 way IDC edge connector) which is compatible with the 5.25" drive connector found on some floppy ribbon cables.

So, I hooked up the GoTek to a TTL serial cable and flashed the Flash Floppy firmware, I did the OLED screen upgrade, I even added a rotary encoder. I followed all the guides you find everywhere.

I connected the GoTek to the CPC and got some errors you would expect if there was no drive.

I linked pins 33 & 34 to set the Ready signal, I linked pins 11 & 12 to force it to be the A drive (shown below, image from CPC Wiki).

But nothing.

No guide I followed gave me any clues. That is until I randomly started researching the pinouts of the 34 way connector feeling I was missing something.

Then I found a project by a guy working on reading Amiga disks with an Arduino, he explains the entire process and linked to pinouts.ru I followed the link and started reading.

This paragraph stood out a mile!

One might ask why the twist was needed. In short, because it was a big time-saver during setup back in the days when it was quite common to find two floppy drives in a machine. Without the twist, for two floppy drives to be used, one had to be jumpered as A: and the other as B:. With the twist, it was possible to leave them both jumpered as B:, and whichever was after the twist will appear to the system as A: because the control lines are inverted.

OMG!

Drives back in the day were normally jumpered as B: by default?! This GoTek is jumpered as unit zero by default. More Googling and I find the following jumper guide. I set my GoTek as S1 (rather than S0)

Guess what?
Everything works now, I can enjoy 36 years of software (yes people still write software for an 8 bit system released in 1985 and it's predecessor in 1984. There is even new hardware out there. I have plans to add WiFi.

I might have to try the GoTek again on my Amiga, it will probably work now! 😁

Stop annoying Office365 service update emails

 

Go to: https://admin.microsoft.com/adminportal/home?ref=MessageCenter&showPref=1

A side panel will open on the right.

                Scroll to the bottom of the side panel
                Untick ‘Send me a weekly email digest’
                Click Save at the bottom of the panel.

Find the location of MS SQL MDF and LDF files

Run the following query against the Master DB to return the location of User DB file locations. You can then select all in the results pane and paste into Excel.

select name,physical_name from sys.master_files where database_id > 4

 

IIS FTP User Isolation with local user accounts has a very manual step that will fuck you up

As it is too manual to remember how to configure FTP on IIS in Windows Server 2012 R2 and above. I decided to document the main catch for me.

Big catch, using local users you turn on FTP User Isolation and everything stops working, you turn off isolation and the remote connections work again.

Make sure your FTP site has a virtual directory named 'LocalUser' in the root folder. Your user virtual directories will go in there.

The folder and the virtual folder MUST be named 'LocalUser' you are not allowed to call it anything else or connections will fail.

This needs to be reflected in the file-system. For example. C:\inetpub\FTPSite\LocalUser\Username1

Convert Waymarked Trails to Garmin Courses

Who could have guessed this would be so difficult.

I bought a Garmin Edge 520 Plus so I can navigate the excellent cycle routes on Waymarked Trails.
Here is london for example. https://cycling.waymarkedtrails.org/#?map=12!51.5217!-0.1022

So the journey of learning new terminology begins, so do the thoughts of sending it back...

In the end (after 2 hours) I found a way.

What we are looking for is a Training Course (Garmin seems to think we are all athletes).

Go to Waymarked Trails and pick a trail, we will use London's CS3 as an example. Click the route to highlight it and you will see a panel on the right as below.




Click on the GPX button in the panel on the right to download the GPX file.
You will need to convert this with the correct options for it to be acceptable and complete.

Now go to https://www.alltrails.com/converter (you might need to login, you can use http://bugmenot.com/view/alltrails.com to find a login if you don't want to sign up).

Upload your GPX file on Alltrails and pick the following options.
Convert to: Track / Route
Download as: GPX Track
Route Options: Combine multiple routes into one route



Click Convert file! (there is a short delay then the file will download)

You are now almost there

Go to https://connect.garmin.com/
Click Training
Click Courses
Click Import


Browse for your newly converted GPX file (in our case cycle-superhighway-3 (1).gpx)
Click Get Started
Select a Course Type (Road will do)
You will see the Route on the map!
Edit the name with the pencil icon and click Save New Course.
You can now use the Send to Device option to transfer this to your Garmin.

So why the AllTrails bit in the middle, without this the file will not import, without the combine option you will not see the full route. Why is this so difficult on a device that is suposedly the best?

Turn off hibernation in Windows

Run in Admin mode CMD: powercfg /h off