[Coco] Can't copy real floppy to CoCo-SDC on a CoCo 2

[Al Hartman]

A few questions:

1. Are these drives 35 track or 40 track drives? Meaning are the disks you 
are trying to back up 35 or 40 track?

2. Have you tried it with the disk controller only, and loading HDB-DOS from 
tape and trying it with DW functioning?

3. Have you stress tested the RAM in that computer overnight to eliminate 
flakey RAM? There are RAM testers in the archive.

4. Are you sure your CPU is good and isn't going bad on you? With all this 
plugging and unplugging, it might have taken a shock. I think that Cloud9's 
Pro-tector is a great idea, and would have one in all three of different 
Coco's if I had the money. Barring that, I keep spare processors handy.

5. Have you cleaned the fingers of the Floppy Controller, SDC Card, and 
Coco? What are you using to have both the floppy controller and SDC? A 
Multi-Pak? A "Y" cable? I don't remember, and haven't kept your past 
messages. (BTW, what kind of Coco is this again? Is the Multi-Pak upgraded 
if this is a Coco 3?)

6. It sure seems to me that something is overflowing memory and wiping out 
your DOS ROM area while you are in all RAM mode. It may be how your SDC-DOS 
is configured for the floppy drives. I'd try it set to 35 track standard 
drives, throw some files on a 35 track disk you make with just the disk 
controller, and try that.

I think you're doing a good job in narrowing it down. There has to be 
something about your particular system that you haven't found yet that is 
causing this. Keep looking.

-[ Al ]-

-----Original Message----- 
From: mike at borncoco.com

Here is my latest test. I replaced the floppy cable, but the results were 
the same. I went back to a two drive setup and I am able to successfully run 
"BACKUP 0 TO 1" using two floppies without the CoCo-SDC. So the two floppies 
are now working as they should be, without issue.

I then reconnected the CoCo-SDC and did the following:

DRIVE 0,OFF
DRIVE 1,OFF
BACKUP 0 TO 1

This ran successfully, but after the backup, SDC-DOS isn't there. The DRIVE 
command generates an "?SN ERROR". So at this point, I will re-flash the 
CoCo-SDC and re-try.

Cheers,
-Mike


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