[Coco] drive motors

[Retro Canada]

such emulators are locked in 512 byte sectors. so dskini fails at the seek stage.

Sent from my TRS-80 Color 1 - model 26-3003B 

On 2013-07-13, at 10:43 AM, Robert Hermanek <rhermanek at centurytel.net> wrote:

Ah, well here you touch on another topic that I've had trouble with:  I try on and off, but have never successfully connected any 3.5" device to my system.  The situation is...

Coco3, standard disk controller.  Using original ribbon cable that came with 5.25 drive, so all connections are card-edge style, and there are two connectors available for drives.  I picked up a second 5.25 drive at some point, hooked everything up, and have confirmed that with 2 5.25" drives, drive 0 and drive 1 respond normally, work perfectly.  So all controllers/cable are A-OK.

Next step:  I've been led to believe that pretty much any 3.5" drive will work... so I ordered a very clever little adapter that is female 34-PIN IDC style connector one one side, and nice shiny gold card-edge male on the other.  So this give me a 5.25" style connector for any 3.5" drive.  I've been careful to double check PIN 1, making sure I don't get anything backwards.  I set all this up as drive 0.  At this point I can power up, and confirm that remaining 5.25" drive (drive 1) works perfectly still.

So:  controller to stock cable to card-edge adapter to 3.5" drive is the full connection for drive 0.  Drive 0 appears to respond normally, meaning drive select is correct, when I do a DIR0 the 3.5" drive lights up and heads move around.  I get an IO error of course, no formatted disks.

I've tried both new HD disks, as well as a factory sealed set of DD disks that I picked up, and have this result every time:  Try DSKINI and I get an IO error half way through.

Clarification on DSKINI:  What does it do exactly?  As anyone knows that listens to their drives, DSKINI sounds like it runs the heads down to one end, then slowly ticks through the tracks.  Then their appears to be a "stage two" where it again repositions the heads, and runs through the tracks more quickly.  Then the process is complete.  If we call this stages one and two, then I can say that my DSKINI operation always fails after stage 1 -- the heads position, all tracks are slowly advanced through, the heads position again, IO error.

Then I gave up for a  while.  More recently, I took a floppy emulator that I could not resist buying, and configured that in the exact same fashion as the 3.5" drive, and had the exact same result -- it appears DSKINI succeeds for some amount of time, then fails part way through.

I'll attempt a link to the emulator:

http://www.amazon.com/Updated-Version-SFR1M44-U100K-Floppy-Emulator/dp/B00C4PCK9S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1373726291&sr=8-1&keywords=SFR1M44-U100K

I've tried both HD and DD media.  I've tried both 1.44 and 720k images on my emulator.  I've tried three different physical 3.5" drives -- one brand spanking new, the other two from the oldest PC systems I could find.  Always have the same experience.

...but I hear others simply hook up 3.5" drives and away they go. Thoughts?

Thanks,
-RobertH


On 7/12/2013 7:20 PM, Robert Gault wrote:
> 
> Maybe it is the controller or the way you set jumpers and resistor blocks in your drives. On my two floppy system, the only floppy that turns on is the one in use.
> 
> I have tested this with a Disto SC-II and two Tandy controllers using the stock DOS1.1. One floppy is a 3.5" the other a 5.25" drive.


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