Here's one for any Racore Experts. I have a Rapport Drive II and a Racore Drive II (with DMA). Both with different defects. The Rapport has a dead parallel port but otherwise works fine. Since the Racore Drive II is a DMA unit it came with a special floppy controller and that floppy controller is defective. I have documentation on the Rapport Drive II but none on the Racore.
The main difference I can see is the Rapport Drive II uses the standard floppy controller with a cable that is split so that the signal and motor control lines can be controlled from the sidecar. The Racore unit has a straight through floppy cable going to both drives with different CS settings and a second cable that goes to the sidecar. What is the purpose of the second cable on the floppy contoller on the Racore Unit. Is it being used to pass data to/from the DMA controller? If not can the Racore Drive II unit with DMA be used with a standard floppy controller and the split floppy cable.
It almost makes sense to use the Racore Drive II with a standard floppy controller because a second floppy is not critical but the power and second parallel port from the Racore Unit is. Is there a way to disable the DMA in the Racore unit as the floppy address mod does not play well with DMA?
Update:
Looking at the Racore sidecar board It has more jumpers than the Rapport. One of them J10 is connected to header pins that would go to the small cable. Perhaps that lets you select which controller you have IBM or Racore floppy controller. Assuming J1 and J2 have the same function as the Rapport, what does jumper C2 do, RTC address, maybe?
Rapport Drive II vs Racore Drive II (with DMA)
Rapport Drive II vs Racore Drive II (with DMA)
Last edited by James on Wed Apr 03, 2013 5:00 am, edited 1 time in total.
-PCjr (1989)-DOS 3.3, Racore Drive II, jrIDE-128 MB DOM, jrExcellerator, Tandy Mod, Serial Card, Combo v2, Config Plus, IBM Parallel Port, Megaboard, Xircom PE3-10BT
-PCjr (2001)-DOS 3.3, jrIDE-128 MB DOM, NEC v20, Parallel Port, Comswap, Xircom PE3-10BT
-PCjr (2001)-DOS 3.3, jrIDE-128 MB DOM, NEC v20, Parallel Port, Comswap, Xircom PE3-10BT
Re: Rapport Drive II vs Racore Drive II (with DMA)
On the Racore unit the J1 and J2 pins are the opposite of those on the the Rapport. J1 is i/o address and J2 is ROM address. The ROM addresses are also different. On J2 pins 1-2 is CC00 and pins 2-3 are C800. I went with C800 and setup the Racore as LPT2
I replace the Rapport Unit (with the bad parallel Port) with the Racore Unit (with no floppy functionality). I used a standard floppy contoller in place of the dead Racore one. I decided it was better to lose a floppy in favor of adding a parallel port plus the Racore unit has a more robust power supply. The floppy becomes even less relevant with the addition of the CF card reader. I am not sure if the DMA does anything with a standard floppy controller and external memory (via the jrIDE) but it doesn't seem to do any harm either. I can always do the floppy controller mod if a I really want a second floppy.
Both the Xircom parallel network adapter and the Datafab parallel CF card reader work on LPT2 even with the oddball i/o address of 358h that Racore assigns. I have set up the CF reader on the Racore parallel port set to LPT2 and the Ethernet adapter on the IBM Parallel Port on LPT1. I still have plans to modify the IBM sidecar to bi-directional.
I haven't tried using the parallel network card on LPT1 and the Datafab Parallel card reader on LPT2 at the same time. The both are set for INT 7 but since they have different i/o it should be OK.
Update:
You can't run the parallel port adapter and the CF Reader at the same time. I guess both of them need int 7 exclusively. No big deal. I switched back to the Rapport Drive II as there was no benefit to having a two parallel port since the pass through on the CF Reader works for the ethernet adapter.
I replace the Rapport Unit (with the bad parallel Port) with the Racore Unit (with no floppy functionality). I used a standard floppy contoller in place of the dead Racore one. I decided it was better to lose a floppy in favor of adding a parallel port plus the Racore unit has a more robust power supply. The floppy becomes even less relevant with the addition of the CF card reader. I am not sure if the DMA does anything with a standard floppy controller and external memory (via the jrIDE) but it doesn't seem to do any harm either. I can always do the floppy controller mod if a I really want a second floppy.
Both the Xircom parallel network adapter and the Datafab parallel CF card reader work on LPT2 even with the oddball i/o address of 358h that Racore assigns. I have set up the CF reader on the Racore parallel port set to LPT2 and the Ethernet adapter on the IBM Parallel Port on LPT1. I still have plans to modify the IBM sidecar to bi-directional.
I haven't tried using the parallel network card on LPT1 and the Datafab Parallel card reader on LPT2 at the same time. The both are set for INT 7 but since they have different i/o it should be OK.
Update:
You can't run the parallel port adapter and the CF Reader at the same time. I guess both of them need int 7 exclusively. No big deal. I switched back to the Rapport Drive II as there was no benefit to having a two parallel port since the pass through on the CF Reader works for the ethernet adapter.
-PCjr (1989)-DOS 3.3, Racore Drive II, jrIDE-128 MB DOM, jrExcellerator, Tandy Mod, Serial Card, Combo v2, Config Plus, IBM Parallel Port, Megaboard, Xircom PE3-10BT
-PCjr (2001)-DOS 3.3, jrIDE-128 MB DOM, NEC v20, Parallel Port, Comswap, Xircom PE3-10BT
-PCjr (2001)-DOS 3.3, jrIDE-128 MB DOM, NEC v20, Parallel Port, Comswap, Xircom PE3-10BT