Simulating the Disk Controller

I spent last night probing my 3B2/310's hard disk controller with a logic analyzer so I can see exactly how it behaves, both with and without a hard disk attached to the system. It proved to be very tricky to get the logic analyzer probes attached because the motherboard is so incredibly dense. In fact, I couldn't get a probe attached to the chip select line no matter how hard I tried. There just wasn't any room to fit a probe between the chip and a nearby resistor array, so I resorted to using a little piece of wire to just touch against the pin. I could have used three hands for that operation.


I exported the data from Saleae Logic as a CSV file, and wrote a little Python script to parse the commands out of it. This is what I got:

9.900982380000000:      WRITE   COMMAND 01      AUX:RESET
9.911167480000000:      READ    STATUS  00
9.911178980000001:      WRITE   COMMAND 02      AUX:CLBUF
9.911183380000001:      WRITE   COMMAND 08      AUX:CLCE
9.911200480000000:      WRITE   DATA    18
9.911219280000001:      WRITE   DATA    f2
9.911238080000000:      WRITE   DATA    00
9.911257080000000:      WRITE   DATA    03
9.911275880000000:      WRITE   DATA    11
9.911294680000001:      WRITE   DATA    0d
9.911313780000000:      WRITE   DATA    00
9.911332600000000:      WRITE   DATA    80
9.911344700000001:      WRITE   COMMAND 20      Specify - 0
9.911358000000000:      READ    STATUS  80
9.921528400000000:      READ    STATUS  40
9.921534400000001:      READ    STATUS  40
9.921559100000000:      READ    STATUS  40
9.921565600000001:      READ    STATUS  40
9.921588800000000:      WRITE   COMMAND 08      AUX:CLCE
9.921663300000001:      READ    STATUS  00
9.921674800000000:      WRITE   COMMAND 02      AUX:CLBUF
9.921679200000000:      WRITE   COMMAND 08      AUX:CLCE
9.921689600000001:      WRITE   COMMAND 30      Sense Unit Status - 0
9.921702900000000:      READ    STATUS  80

I can now match this sequence up exactly with my simulator, so I can simulate the precise behavior, including the delay between status 0x80 (which means "I'm busy, try again later") and 0x40 (which means "I'm done now")

Unfortunately, the simulator still hangs after loading and executing /etc/init from the boot floppy, but now at least I know it has nothing to do with a badly behaving disk controller. I have proof that mine behaves the same way as the real thing.