Remember the Cyclone copier dongle ?

[CBMretrofan]

Hi,

I was wondering about the Cyclone dongle from Cachet and how it worked to copy MFM protected disks back in the day. Looking at the hardware diagram, some datalines are swapped when connecting it in series with the amiga and an external external drive, df1. And thats it !
The internal drives speed seems also important to match with the external one. And Ive read sometimes it took about half an hour or so to copy some protected disks.. why ?
Anybody here that has more information about how this worked ?

Greetings,

CBMretrofan

[Retro1234]

MrVice probably wrote some detail once.
There was also a later version that had a chip inside

[CBMretrofan]

Thanks, I could not find anything with the forum search. Where can I find his posts ?

[CBMretrofan]

Thanks again. Yep, I just found something from MrVice

[jotd]

google search: cyclone copier site:eab.abime.net

https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=44379

superb copier BTW. Much better than the competition (ACS...)

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by jotd

google search: cyclone copier site:eab.abime.net

https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=44379

superb copier BTW. Much better than the competition (ACS...)

That all copy systems was shit, it couldn't copy anything I threw at it back in the day.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by CBMretrofan

some datalines are swapped when connecting it in series with the amiga and an external external drive, df1. And thats it !

It routed Read Data on the internal drive to Write Data on the external drive, and Index on the external drive to Disk Change on the internal drive. Both drives were then enabled at the same time, causing raw data read from one drive to be immediately written to the other. The redirected Index pulse allowed the copy program to detect the index pulse from each drive independently while they were both enabled.

The internal drives speed seems also important to match with the external one.

If the internal drive is slow and the external drive is fast then the end of the track data may overwrite the beginning (in a normal copy it's not so critical because the data is always written at the correct speed). The other way around would result in a 'short' track which copy protection schemes might be able to detect.

And Ive read sometimes it took about half an hour or so to copy some protected disks.. why ?

The index pulse tells the disk controller that the first sector is coming up. The Amiga doesn't normally need this because it writes and reads whole tracks and so can't get confused by rubbish between the sectors, but most other machines have a controller that expects the sectors to be aligned to the index pulse. Some Amiga games also use the index pulse, so for a 'perfect' copy both drives need to synchronized so their index pulses occur at (or close to) the same time. Since no two drives run at exactly the same speed their index pulses will eventually coincide if run together for long enough, but it could take a while.

[CBMretrofan]

@Bruce Abbot: Thanks for the indepth infos !

Whow, clever guys at Cachet coming up with this swapping lines idea

[DanScott]

Cyclone was created by Richard Aplin

I remember him making them in the back room of a church hall in Croydon, during one of the S.A.E. parties back in the day A few of us had to hit Maplins store at some point to fetch more components

[RichAplin]

Originally Posted by DanScott

Cyclone was created by Richard Aplin

I remember him making them in the back room of a church hall in Croydon, during one of the S.A.E. parties back in the day A few of us had to hit Maplins store at some point to fetch more components

HA yes that was a classic, I remember that well!! Fun times... The electronics shop only had 25-pin D connectors so I was sitting there hacksawing them down to 23-pin ;-)