Amstrad User Group
Amstrad User Group
Exchange of data to and from a PC
Disc transfer
Since the PCW 8256, 8512 and 9512 were the most successful models in Holland (Infodata/Schneider estimates about 5.000 machines sold), the non-market standard of the 3" disc is an obstacle in the transfer of data to a PC. The latter PcW's have been equipped with a 3.5" disc drive and the problem is less relevant there. Your options are:
File conversion
Unfortunately, transferring the files to a PC is not sufficient: each program uses it's own file format and, especially when LocoScript is involved, this can be a strange format. The LocoScript set (as from version 2) contains a massive 600+ characters, whereas a normal program only recognises 256. The secret is in the operating system that makes LocoScript what it is: a customised version of CP/M. Moreover, the LocoScript file format is block-based and has a remarkable format. Listing it on-screen using 'type-style' commands is therefore impossible. With other file formats you are likely to recognise at least something but with LocoScript only the word "JOY" is displayed, followed by a series of random or unreadable characters. Your options for format conversion are:
Connect an external 3.5" drive to a PCW
The B-drive connection of an 8256 or 8512 is suitable for a Shugart-compatible 80 track double sided disc drive. With the latter models, both the A and B-connections are compatible. This means that a standard disc drive may be used, both 5.25" and 3.5" disc drives in the 720kb version would be compatible. However, Amstrad has used a deviating connector using 26 pins, rather than the standard 34-pins connector as used by the Shugart standard... Fortunately, creating a conversion connector is not that hard: it is only technical work, that has nothing to do with electronics. The layout is displayed below.
26-pin Amstrad (3" B) to 34-pin Shugart (3.5" or 5.25")
PCW 1 on PC 7
ascending...
PCW 6 on PC 12
skip 2 wires2..
PCW 7 on PC 15
ascending...
PCW 26 on PC 34
Also consult the layout to connect a 3" disc drive to a PC (below). A coloured cable on the side indicates pin number 1: either that or the number is printed on the cable or connector. The next problem to overcome is that the PCW uses and relies on a functioning READY signal and most modern disc drives no longer support this. You can, however, still purchase suitable disc drives:
3.5" TEAC FD-235F 100-u (jumper D1 on)
3.5" TEAC FD-235F 112-u (jumper D1 and RY on)
3.5" TEAC FD-235F 136-u (jumpers D1 and RY on)
3.5" TEAC-235HF -U (jumpers FG, 2-1-G, BC1, DE2 and CD3 on)
5.25" TEAC FD 55FR 510-u (external power supply required)
Contact us for an overview of (known) types that do and those that do not work with a PCW: do not rely on somebody's statements that it should work. Especially when this is the sales person! Also consult TEAC Data storage products (link opens in a new window). There is a do-it-yourself schedule to emulate this signal but it is expensive and not without disadvantages to use.
Power supply of an 3.5" disc drive would not have been a problem, as the power supply of the PCW is powerful enough to deal with a 3.5" drive. HOWEVER: Amstrad reversed the 5 and 12 volts supply as available in the 3.5" connector of the 8256 and 8512. That is to say, in the days that Amstrad designed the PCW 8000-series, the layout of the pins was not standardised yet... See the picture in the paragraph about connecting a 3" to a PC or contact us to check this. Do note there will certainly be damage when you connect the wrong voltage! When (remaining) in doubt, use an external power supply: a 5.25" disc drive will need one anyway as the power supply of the PCW is not strong enough to cope with a 5.25". An old power supply from the wreck of a PC will do just nicely.
As said before, the 3" drives are basically Shugart compatible. As this implies that you can use a 3.5" or a 5.25" drive on a PCW, then this also would imply that you can use a 3" on a PC. That is only partly true: the single sided 173kb A-drives of a PCW 8256/8512 are not supported by most PC's. Software like 22Disk and JOYCE may be able to cope with such single sided drives but the Basic Input Output System (BIOS) of modern PC's can no longer handle these.
This means practically that you can only use the B-drive of an 8512 or the A-drive of a 9512 on a PC, these are the double sided 720kb drive types, model EME-231 (PCW 8512) and EME-232 (PCW 9512). The layout to adapt a 3.5" for use with a PCW also applies the other way around, for the use of a 3" with a PCW, with a few reservations. To begin with, the Amstrad disc drives are hard-wired which means that the cable and the drive actually determine the drive-letter in the system. With an 8512 this will always be drive B and with a 9512 always drive A. As PC's cannot deal with this you should remove all other disc drives from the PC (disconnect all cables). You may leave hard discs and CD/DVD players in the PC - this only relates to disc drives! Do not leave disc drives connected when experimenting with a 3" in a PC - the damage is inevitable and your fault!
I usually take the old 5.25" Shugart connector as this is great for welding. Do pay attention to the 1:1 connection of the signals: use a volt meter to test whether, for instance, pin 1 actually outputs at the other end of line 1 and do this for all pins and lines. You can also use a 3.5" connector but this connector can hardly be welded so you have to use a special pair of pliers to nail/clinch the connector to a flat cable: male connectors are not easy to find, so... The photograph shows a 5.25" male connector with a bridge welded to it (the single white wire on the left of the green PCB): this is a case where the connections were not on a 1:1 basis and needed changing. The bottom cable is a conversion from Amstrad 26 to Shugart 34-pin, the top cable is a standard FDC cable from a PC.
The next thing you have to pay attention to is the power issue, already mentioned in the paragraph about connecting a 3.5" to a PCW: the Amstrad power connector is reversed with the 8512 drive. Basically, you have to insert the 3.5" power connector the other way around in the 3" drive of an 8512. Remove the barriers that block the connection (visible on the photograph on the left - the PC connection is inserted in the PCW drive of an 8512 the other way around). You can use the drive of a PCW 9512 without problems.
On the left side of the data connector (visible in the picture as the floppy cable is not inserted) you can see pin number 1. You can very well use the data cable of a PCW to connect the drive to a PC as the Amstrad connector is already clinched to it. You can easily get one from the scrap heap while an individual connector (26 pins, supplied by 3M) is less common and a bit expensive. Be careful not to insert cables and/or connectors the other way around as you may cause damage. Besides the 3" disc drive you may very well damage the floppy disc controller of your PC or even other, more vital, equipment!
Now you have to parameterise the BIOS and take account of the appropriate drive: an EME-231 of a PCW 8512, for instance, is wired as drive B. The BIOS used in this example is a common American Megatrends Inc (AMI) but another brand of BIOS would not a problem either.
These are the parameters to create a successful connection. The PC will not boot when the 3" is not functioning because of the Halt on errors setting and the fact that other disc drives are not connected. When Windows does boot, the 3" will work too but that typically takes some attempts. The picture shows that Windows identifies the disc drive as drive A (while the wiring is for a drive B) and detects a 5.25" drive. These false interpretations do not block the functioning of the drive or the system in any way.
The software to use with a 3" disc drive on a PC is 22Disk (to read and write discs under Windows), the MS Dos program CPDRead / Write (copy protected disk reader / writer: a program to write floppy disc images to a hard disc, for use with emulation software on the PC. You can write an image back to a real disc using the Write program and copy protected discs do not pose a problem for CPDRead/Write), MS Oddball (to convert PCW disc format to PC disc format), CPM.EXE for reading 3" CF2DD discs and the JOYCE emulator (besides drive emulation, this emulator can also use the real, non-virtual, disc drives). You often would only want to transfer files from PCW to PC, though, and 22Disk does that job just perfectly, see the links page for the software mentioned.
Use a serial null modem between a PCW and a PC
A null modem is an excellent option to send data between a PCW and a PC, provided for that the PCW is equipped with a serial RS232 port. Most PC's do have such a port so that the transfer of data is not restricted to PC's: Apple's, Atari's and you name it, would be in the scope too... Especially when you use well known standard software like Kermit, a program from the University of Colombia that is available for almost any platform or computer. You can download the PCW version on the download page. If you cannot transfer to a PCW just yet, we can provide this program on 3" disc. The download page also contains an older, but useable, version of Kermit for MS DOS.
The layout of a null modem cable to the PC is fairly easy:
2 < - > 3
3 < - > 2
5 < - > 20
7 < - > 7
20 < - > 5
pins 4, 6 and 8 must be short circuited on the same side. The software itself is simple as well: the PCW version of Kermit is already set to the proper maximum parameters (only the high-speed interface from Margolis would be able to cope with higher speeds - contact us if you have this interface). You have to set the PC to the proper COM port, for example SET PORT COM 1. Followed by the proper speed, for instance SET SPEED 9600 and then you can use the SEND command or the one and the RECEIVE command on the other computer to start the communication process. A funny feature in Kermit is the CONNECT command that causes input from one keyboard to be listed on the console of the other computer: perhaps you could even use Kermit to create a small-scale network system. "The Network" made by Creative, along with the Flipper multitasking software, however, would be much better at that because they were written specifically for the PCW.
Use a parallel LocoLink between a PCW and a PC
LocoMotive (nowadays SD Microsystems) also marketed a device to transfer data. You can connect the parallel LocoLink to the printer port of the PC and the expansion port of the PCW. The PCW is integrated as a slave in a network with the PC as drive Z, after the LocoLink software has been integrated with the LocoScript software. You can now copy files, but with the older PC version you can only send from PCW to PC. The newer Windows version allows for transfer in both directions. The software also allows for file conversion, see: LocoScript DOS.
We have the older DOS cable and software (on 5.25" floppy discs) in Holland, but besides the issue of the 5.25" format, we have better and faster solutions for conversion. However, if you need to convert on a regular basis the new LocoLink is the only solution because LocoScript PCW as from version 2.51 and Script Professional as from 2.51 can read and process each others files.
This communication method is still under development. The theory is to convert files on the PCW to a sort of Morse code (acoustic) and to record this on the PC (an incredible noise, that is). You can record it on a tape or directly on a PC using a microphone in the mic-port of a PC. The acoustic file (AIFF: audio interchange format file) can then be converted again to a format that can be interpreted by the PC again. The advantages are the possibility of a large distance between the two computers (via a tape) and the low expenses: a microphone on the PC is basically the only investment required!
A prototype in Mallard Basic (a short listing that can be typed in relatively easy on the PCW) has been developed but the speed of 25bps is too slow: a telephone modem nowadays reaches speeds of 56.000 bps. Advanced features as hand-shake and error correction are missing, as well as a suitable program on the PC. So far CoolEdit has been used but this is a rather expensive shareware program. To be continued.
The most simple conversion is the conversion to American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) on the Joyce, a format that is used by almost all computers (even Windows, although Windows uses the ANSI-variety).
But ASCII only has 256 characters and LocoScript has 600+ so that quite a lot of the characters may be changed and you will need to be edit later using Find&Replace options. All page-layout and foreign accents will be lost in the conversion process. You may save some page-layout by opting for 'page image' which will retain margins, blank lines and such, but that is about the maximum you may expect...
You can save a file in ASCII format from the Disc Manager in LocoScript, using [F1] or [F8],depending on the version of LocoScript.
LocoCon is a conversion program written in TurboPascal (source code, German manual and programming language available for free) that can read LocoScript 1 files and can convert to ASCII. It was published as a listing in the German PC Schneider International and was destined for the German market. There are additional conversion features for translating, for instance, ü to ue and daisy wheel printers (marketed by Schneider) are especially supported using built-in pausing options.
Although LocoCon only handles LocoScript version 1, it is a very useful program when you use version 1. And, if you have the expertise, the source code could be modified to deal with the changes required for LocoScript 2. See the download page.
file conversion: LocoScript DOS
There are several versions of LocoScript for the MS Dos platform. Each of these versions can read PCW files on a PC, store it in the LocoScript PC format and then convert to, for instance, WordPerfect. The version I have is not suitable for mass-conversion, though. You can do disc conversion as well as file conversion when you have one of the two versions of LocoLink (either for Dos or Windows), a program that can be integrated fully with LocoScript.You can buy LocoScript DOS and PC Easy as well as Script Professional with SMD Systems. See the links page.
The Samson in town is Ansible's AILINK, a Windows program (part of it through a DOS box) that converts CF2DD discs (this part is run in a DOS box) and can then convert them to a variety of formats (in a Windows environment): HTML, ASCII, Word, Richmond Text format are amongst these output formats. It is a quick process, with a mass tag option and relatively cheap: I believe it to offer the best value for your money.
You can download a light version, CPM.EXE that can only convert CF2DD discs and cannot convert files, for free on Ansible's home-page (freebies section). See the links page.
To the main PCW-page.
