SuperCard Pro - For Disk Imaging and Drive Repair

Disk Imaging

One of my interests in the Retro Computing hobby has been software preservation.  Trying to recover data off some of my wife's old floppy disks from her college days sent me down a path that's gotten me to the point where I own several different Macs and PCs from the 90s that I use as "Bridge Machines" to get data moved off old floppies onto modern hardware.

I'm also interested in a range of different systems and in having the ability to make and restore disks of any format.  I became aware of the Kryoflux disk imaging system when reading on Sonic Purity's blog on this article that I've referred to in several bLog articles before.  I didn't pursue the Kryoflux because this solution was expensive and because I didn't understand floppy disk technology well enough to be comfortable with flux imaging.   Thankfully this knowledge gap can be easily addressed by a great deal of information on the Web, and since then I have put more time into researching this topic.

One of the few benefits of the Pandemic has been that all the Vintage Computer Festivals have been online.  I learned about Jim Drew's SuperCard Pro from watching Craig Ernster's presentation. at VCF Midwest 2020.  This device is significantly less expensive than Kryoflux.  I didn't buy one right away, but when I got my first CP/M machine and didn't know how, or even if I'd be able to make floppy disk copies with the machine I put one on order.

I've paired the SuperCard Pro with the Asus laptop I use as my retro computer engineering PC and set up a couple of floppy drives, both a TEAC 5 1/4" DD drive as well as a newer 3 1/2" 1.44MB floppy drive.  I have stored these items together so it doesn't take long to have the disk imaging solution up and running on the bench...

So far, I have imaged and restored boot disks for my Compaq Portable (360K Floppy with DOS 3.3), and that worked well using a preset in the software.

Also I've imaged and restored boot disks for my Megatel Quark 100 CP/M computer, again, using a CP/M preset in the software.

Drive Repair

The Super Card Pro has also been helpful for drive diagnostics and repair.  It has a separate screen  for Drive / Disk Utilities.  This allows you to control the drive motor and also the track steppers that move the heads back and forth.  As you can see in some of Adrian Black's videos, having separate control over these two drive functions can help when lubricating and troubleshooting drives that haven't run for a long time.  Using these features of SCP, I've been able to troubleshoot these issues:

Drive Motor Speed Adjustment

Index Sensor Good / Bad

Track Stepper Motor Position

Track Zero Sensor Good / Bad (the Disk Media Test will fail if the Track Zero sensor is not working)

When comparing the functions of the Super Card Pro with IMD, I believe that IMD could also be used to diagnose all of these scenarios, but I find the SCP interface a bit easier to navigate.  One gap with SCP, I have not been able to adjust drive alignment with this tool.  I think the IMD program is the only (easy, non oscilloscope) way to do that.

My latest drive repair was getting a pair of Magnetic Peripherals Full Height DS/DD Drives back up and running for my IBM 5150.  Although these drives are now fully functional the alignment of these drives doesn't match up with the other 360K drives that I own.  Drive alignment is still outside of my comfort zone, but I'm hoping to learn more about that soon so I can get the various drives I own back lined up with one another.