Disk activity indicators for drives in Slot 5

[skiphipdata]

It would be nice to have a separate set of disk activity "LEDs" for the drives in Slot 5.

[tomcw]

This feels like a useful think to add, so let me share some work in progress...

I added extra "Slot 5" Disk-II LEDs & track/sector status, below the "Slot 6" Disk-II status:
(Only visible in 2x Windowed mode)

But I felt there was too much track/sector debug "noise" for a regular user, so I made it only visible via this extra config checkbox:
NB. the "Slot 6" track/sector status is always visible in 2x Windowed mode)

[burniouf]

wouldn't it be possible to display also exact Quarter track position for all Disk ][ drives ?

[skiphipdata]

I like this, but I'm thinking it could be nice to have the full status display in non-2x windowed mode as well. Maybe you could try moving the drive status indicators to a row on the bottom on the window instead of on the side? It seems like the side bar is getting crowded and could benefit from being spread out horizontally.

Or maybe find a way to arrange them that would more closely resemble the way they would look with real hardware. If I had 4 drives connected to 2 controllers on a real Apple II, I'd probably stack them in a cube, like this, on the right side of the machine:

S5D1 S6D1
S5D2 S6D2

Other folks might arrange them differently, but back in the day the way I saw most people who had 2 drives arrange them was to have them stacked on the right side of the machine, with drive 1 on top and drive 2 on the bottom. I never knew anyone who had 2 controllers, but if I had that setup today, I'd arrange the drives like above so that their physical locations correspond to where they're physically connected inside the machine. Slot 5 is on the left, and Drive 1 is on top. Maybe it would make sense to arrange the virtual LEDs similarly for a 2-disk controller configuration?

[tomcw]

@burniouf - using this small font, this is what the characters: ½, ¼ and ¾ look like.
IE. the image below is meant to display the following:

T 3½ T 0¼
S 6¾ S ??

Given the font size, I don't think those fractions are legible.

But since they are changing so quickly - do you care?

Other ideas (just focussing on the current UI layout for now)

• have a mouse-over tooltip to show the full decimal track, eg. "T 3.75"
• use a simple replacement character, eg. "a","b","c" to mean ".25",".5",".75", eg. "T 3c" to mean "T 3.75"
• use a better glyph, eg. -,=,三, eg. "T 3三" to mean "T 3.75"
  • or 1/2/3 dots, eg, . : ⋮ , eg. "T 3⋮" to mean "T 3.75"

[sicklittlemonkey]

Nice work Tom - I like the ability to simplify the display.
I think .25 etc is clearest, but in case you wanted other ideas, you could also use symbols.

Quarters of a block: ▘ , ▚ , and ▛ or ▜ .
There are also quarters of a circle: ◔ , ◑ , ◕ etc.

[burniouf]

i would use it for debugging, so i don't think you should spend that much time on visual effets or symbols.....
.00 .25 .50 .75 should be more helpful :-)

[tomcw]

Thanks.

btw, you can already see quarter track (or half phase) info from the built-in debugger (F7), using disk i[nfo]:

(but currently only for slot-6's enabled drive; and only quarter track precision for .woz images)

[burniouf]

just read again above.....
your idea of "have a mouse-over tooltip to show the full decimal track, eg. "T 3.75" could be fine !
you may add in the tooltip T$00,25, ph0:on/off, ph1:on/off,ph2:on/off,ph3:on/off....bitOffset....etc...
"phase $42.50" has not a clear meaning, to my opinion, should be "halftrack $42.50", but in taht case, why not "QTrack $85"

[tomcw]

Thanks @burniouf - I agree, a tooltip gives more scope for richer details and means I don't need to try to "shoehorn" more into the existing UI's tiny space.

[tomcw]

I'm experimenting with:

• Slot 5 Disk II LEDs are always visible (if Slot 5 card is diskii)
• A UI toggle: used to switch between showing the track/sector info for both slots or no track/sector info (just show LEDs)
• The tooltip (which is WIP) currently shows hex & dec track info for both drives

Show full track/sector info for all s6+s5 drives	Just show LEDs

[sicklittlemonkey]

Looks good! My only requested change would be to add spaces, i.e. "Drive1" -> "Drive 1". ; - )

[burniouf]

Same for me, looks perfect! if you want to debug easily with Qtracks, just boot ProDOS.FX media and use a 192k formatted disk

[tomcw]

Re-orientate, so that drive 1 (and drive 2) info is vertical - so it matches the GUI that the tooltip is for:

[tomcw]

Again drive 1 (and drive 2) info is vertical - but this time with track's hex and dec on a single (longer line), and then sector's hex/dec on next line:

[tomcw]

Probably this latter one is best?
btw, if we know it's a DOS (or ProDOS) disk, then we could also include the logical sector number too (or block number for ProDOS).
EDIT: it is showing the logical sector number (as read from the "magic" DOS/ProDOS memory locations)... so we could include the physical sector (after decoding the VTSC 4-and-4 address field nibbles).

[Michaelangel007]

Re-orientate, so that drive 1 (and drive 2) info is vertical - so it matches the GUI that the tooltip is for:

I like that both Hex and Dec values are shown!

Another option might be to drop the the T and S entirely for the hex display and just put the hex values on one line?

$11.00/F

[sicklittlemonkey]

Slightly off topic: I don't think I ever saw hex used for the rational quarter track part, ie: $11.4 ... $11.8 ... $11.C.
It's a pity, as it's nice and compact.

[tomcw]

Thanks for the further suggestions (and yes, a shame the hex fractional part didn't ever catch on).

In the end I've settled on this wide tooltip:

[tomcw]

btw, I also extended the debugger to support DISK commands for Disk II cards in other slots:

Debugger: add 'DISK SLOT n' - to set current slot of Disk II card
  - ie. support 'DISK INFO' for slot 5

[medasaro]

I, too, would very much like to have a display for fractional tracks. It is very useful when debugging why copy-protected .woz files won't work.

-Matthew D'Asaro

[tomcw]

Released this in AppleWin 1.30.13.0, so closing this issue.

[tingtron]

On some ProDOS disks
I am getting ?? in S when track T is getting updated.
Compared with a previous version of AppleWin this does not happen -- it always shows S as non-?? whenever T is updated.