[Coco] Frustrated in Seattle

[Ed Orbea]

I am getting frustrated with my attempts to utilize 3.5" floppy drives 
with NitrOS9. It is not the fault of the O/S, rather it is my lack of 
knowledge, so I am asking for some help or guidance.
My system is a CoCo3 with a Cloud-9 512kb memory upgrade
Either a Disto Super Controller II or a Tandy Controller (26-3129)
Roy's VGA converter
NitrOS9, 6809 Level II, Revision Date: 2006-03-02
DriveWire 2.0

When I use either controller, and the correct drivers, I have absolutely 
no problems with 5.25 diskettes. I have a couple of different disk drive 
configurations
(a) Dual 360k DSDD 40 track drives (standard 40dd descriptor)
(b) Dual 1.2m DSHD 80 track drives (standard 80dd descriptor, but using 
5.25 DSDD media)
(c) Single 360k DSDD 40 track & Single 1.2m DSHD 80 track (standard 40dd 
and 80dd descriptors)
On all 1.2m drives, I have pins 1-4 taped over as per previous messages 
in this group

I am aware that I am "fudging the system" by using 5.25 DSDD diskettes 
as 3.25 diskettes. The descriptor for these drives/disks shows:
Format: CoCo
Size: 3 1/2"
Sect per Track: 18
Track 0, Sect per Track: 18
Physical Cylinders: 80
Track Offset: 0
Sector Offset: 1
Min Sector Allocation: 8
Recording Format: MFM
Track Density: 135
# of logical cylinders: 80
Surface: 2
Interleave: 3
And as I said, I have had absolutely no problems with any drives/media 
but in all cases I am using DSDD media.

Now, I want to convert to 3.5" media. I have purchased several TEAC 
FD-235HF drives from a local PC recycler. The TEAC drive I an first 
attempting to use (I have cleaned it out and tested it on a Windows XP 
system, and it all works correctly) is the model 4291. This model has 10 
jumpers which can be seen at: 
www.teac.co.jp/dspd/product/magnetic/jumper/fd_jumper.html

This drive is set as DS1. According to the specs on this drive, HA, HI, 
HO, and LHI are used to select density mode bu either interface pin #2 
pr High Density hole selector.
(1) I have jumpered HI and LHI so the drive will set the HD level to LOW.
(2) I have jumpered HA which should utilize the sensor

Now, I am using HD (1.44 IBM type) 3.5" media, not 720 media. I have 
tried it with the density hole covered (with black tape) and uncovered. 
Regardless of the way I jumper the drive or cover/uncover the density 
hole on the media, the following occurs.
(1) Format the media with a default 80dd descriptor (confirmed by dmode)
(2) The format portion completes without any error
(3) After entering a disk name (using any text) the verify portion starts
(4) At 0058 (hex) error 243 is generated (this seems to happen just 
after the head does a "re-seek" (my word for what happens) and the 
errors continue until I abort the format

So, for those of you who are using 3.5" media with NitrOS9:
(1) What floppy drives are you using (720 or 1.44)?
(2) What media are you using (720 or 1.44)?
(3) Did you modify your 80dd descriptor and if so what did you change?
(4) Did you have to do any "jumpering" or pin-covering on your 3.5" drives?
(5) What question do I need to ask, that I am ignorant about, and thus, 
don't know to ask?

Thanks

Ed