floppy issues

[Brocky]

ive recently got a hold of a 6128 and 4 3in disks..
firstly the internal drive....
the belt on the drive needed changing and the drive can read disks..
out of the 4 disks, there is only 2 sides that seems to format and work correctly...(using parados to format)
all 6 other sides are failing to format some tracks, some track 40, some track 0, some random tracks mid disk...

im guessing these disks have all just failed due to age?..
or do i need to look at adjusting signal strength from the head?

secondly...external drive...
i want to connect a 3.5in drive as i have 2x boxes of brand new disks..(40 per pack both were sealed boxes)
ive got myself an old floppy cable with the edge connector to connect to the CPC...
ive followed the guides on the wiki to jumper the pins to provide the READY signal..
but no matter what i do when i access |B im always getting "Disc Missing" error (this error doesnt seem to be listed on the wiki...only the bad command error, or 2 drives acting as one)

ive also made sure the drive is powered up before powering the CPC...
ive also taped the hole for the disks to read as DD
ive cleaned up the edge connector on the 6128 aswell with no change (it was already quite clean compared to some ive seen!)

ive tried 3 different drives
Panasonic JU-257A566P
NEC FD1231M
Sony MPF920

ive read and seen the sony drive works perfectly fine with the CPC
i havent done any modifications to the drives as i just want to get one working using the cable hacks, and ill mod the drive later once i know its working..

does anyone have any ideas why id always be getting disc missing error?
it seems like a power issue ...right?!.. but LED is on and disk is spinning (ive never see the head move tho!)
(im powering it via a 5v 2A USB port on a bench PSU that is also being used to provide 12v to the CPC for the internal drive)

[Bryce]

Hi,
    regarding the internal drive. When Tracks 0 and 40 are giving issues, there's a chance that the drive is spinning at the wrong speed. You should check the RPM with one of the programs available (here on the Forum) to ensure the drive isn't out of spec and adjust it as required.

Bryce.

[Brocky]

thanks Bryce
im reading around 294 rpm at track 0. and 296 rpm at track 40... slightly slow...
the drive is a EME-156.. the top of the drive motor has the hole for adjustment, but seems to be some rubber in there instead of a trim pot....
am i supposed to pull that out or just stick a screwdriver through it?!

SMH.. external drive ..sort of working when i put the jumper for the READY signal on the correct side of the cable!
but now im getting write errors when trying to format....with all 3 drives.... (yes disks are set to unlocked/write!)

[Bryce]

Hi Brocky, 
       don't touch it. It's a tiny bit low, but well within the acceptable tolerances. Under 285 or over 315 is where you need to consider adjusting things. I would still check that you have definitely removed all the residue of the old belt from both wheels, but if they are clean, you just got unlucky and really did get a few dodgy disks. As it's an old (unserviced) drive, I'd also check for dry joints on all the header connectors on the drives PCB. Mainly the power connector and the connectors that go to the motors and heads. If there's any sign of cracks, you need to reflow the solder on those pins.

Bryce.

[Brocky]

awesome..i had a feeling it was close enough...thanks
i really think its the discs themselves.. hence why i want to get the external 3.5in up and running....
solder joints all look good..and the drive does work perfectly fine...with a 'good' disk!

just need to sort out why im getting write issues with the 3.5in drives now

i guess i really, really, should check these drives work in a PC!.. they where all pulled from 20yo PC cases that had been gutted of everything except the floppy drives!
...but thats for tomorrow!

[retro space]

If sides fail, you might need to clean the head with isopropyl or something.

[Brocky]

If sides fail, you might need to clean the head with isopropyl or something.

i should have mentioned that was done when i changed the belt.... 
...and also again earlier today as the drive had been sitting out of the case for a couple of days...

[Brocky]

i have the sony drive working now.. gave it a good head clean again 
went to parados and formatted romdos D1 no probs

[Brocky]

for anyone interested heres a few pics....
...its really gotta be the simplest thing ya can do with the 6128! 

[GUNHED]

Looks like you got the Mother X4 expansion board or similar. In case you have a RAM and ROM expansion connected, then you can test some demos for FutureOS which do load files of some hundred KB into RAM. If this is all fine, you got a well working test for your B-drive (80 tracks, two sides).
Good luck with your drives and that! 

[Brocky]

yup already got futureos setup on the M4 SD with all its apps.. havent really had a play with it yet... yes 512K ram expansion aswell!...SymbOS is nice with 640K!

so what im really trying to do...is run the Batman Forever demo... wont load from M4... and every time i try to copy the dsk from M4 (M4FE) it write fails...yet other games work fine.. ive tried the Double size version (for 3.5in) and the 3 sided version for the 3in disks... none will write the batman files...

so ive purchased an external USB floppy drive to connect to my PC, all 3 of my current pcs are missing floppy connector!).. im hoping ill be able to write the dsk images fine from PC

[GUNHED]

The best is to contact Rhino via PM here in the forum or email him. But I'm afraid the demo will only work from disc. That issue came up here more often sadly.

BTW: Get the update for the M4 card a bit more often a year. Work on applications like FutureTex is advancing quickly (well, quickly for me at least   ). 

[Brocky]

so the usb floppy drive arrived today...

CPCDiskXP v2.5.1 wont write the image due to the low level driver not working with USB drives (the USB floppy option is always grayed out)

is there some other software, windows or linux that will let me write the Batman Forever DSK images to real 3.5in floppy on usb?

edit.. tried the 3 side version with JavaCPC....and got this error....looks like im up the creek without a paddle

DiskUtil 1.3 (November 17 2021), by Markus Hohmann -- http://cpc-live.com/
SAMdisk 3.4 (Aug 14 2012), (c) 2012 Simon Owen -- http://simonowen.com/samdisk/
SamDisk.exe "G:\emu\Emu\javacpc\128k\Batman Forever (UK) (Face 1A).dsk" a: -h0 --gaps -c43 -d
Error: USB floppy drives cannot be used with SAMdisk
Done...

[McArti0]

BatmanForever has a difficult structure. The first two tracks are formatted differently than the rest of the floppy.

[Brocky]

seems i cant get the usb floppy drive to work at all with 720kb disks (covered tab disks)..even tho its advertised to... just spins forever...

and the no low level driver access seems to be a big issue in writing the files
...gonna try returning it.....
and bite the bullet and build up an old PC that has a floppy connector...

[McArti0]

I don't know if this solution suits you. But BatmanForever works well with GOTEK.

[Brocky]

I don't know if this solution suits you. But BatmanForever works well with GOTEK.

thats the other option.. if i had one!.. i was thinking about maybe getting greaseweazel aswell...
but i have parts for an old PC.. i just gotta get off my ass and build it up and install old windows on it

[Brocky]

just my luck.. found an old pentium 200MMX with 96Mb ram in my collection i thought was dead...
powered it up and booted into Windows ME... ..heres where the bad luck kicks in... CPCXPDSK only works on windows 2000 and above.. no 95/98 or ME

gonna try installing win2000 on it if i can manage to find a CD to burn the image to... it has USB ports but windows me couldnt access it without a long lost driver, and i couldnt see any options to boot from USB in the old bios

[Brocky]

win2000 finally installed.... copy over latest version of cpcdiskxp... run the fdinstall.exe and setup the low level driver....

goto run CPCDiskXP.exe... windows complains that its not a valid win32 image... and fails to load...SMH

...luckily there are old versions available... i downloaded the one dated 2009! (ver2.0) ..and it ran without an issue...

im now running batman forever demo from single 3.5in floppy

[Brocky]

i thought i should post a follow up.. in the name of completeness!

i contacted cpcmania/Mochilote and asked about win2000 support.. seems it hasnt been supported since that 2009 version that i just happened to pick!...

minimum windows required is now XP

i ended up using TinyXP on this old Pentium MMX 200Mhz system and it runs pretty good..ive managed to transfer a bunch of disks that the M4 board has issues with