[Coco] Disk drive question

gene heskett gheskett at wdtv.com
Wed Jan 18 22:25:59 EST 2012 

On Wednesday, January 18, 2012 10:11:29 PM Patrick Wilson did opine:

> I have a question for you gentlemen.  I started work on this some time
> ago and lost my momentum when i had to attack a project.  Here is the
> deal.  I have a number of CoCo 2 and 3, and one of the FD-501 sets.   I
> am trying to hook up a 3.5 along with the 5.25 but cannot get the
> drives to work properly.  I think i am safe in assuming i am doing
> SOMETHING wrong, but have no idea what at this point.  It appears that
> the drives are experiencing addressing conflicts.  But as i said, i am
> not sure.  You gentlemen have obviously overcome this sort of problem
> so i was wondering if you could profer some advice to help me get my
> issue corrected.   Any suggestions are welcome. 
> Thanks,
>  
> Pat
> 
1. All 3.5" drives are programmed to be drive 1, and the twist in the end 
section of a pc drive cable make it drive 0.

2. I have always attacked it as a cabling problem because the shack 
supplied cables have missing contacts in the card edge connectors.

That means I disassemble the connectors by removal from the cable and 
obtain some that have all 34 contacts installed, and install those in their 
place.  With a card edge to DIL drive adapter for the 3.5" drive, put it on 
the middle connector, and check the jumpers on the 5.25" drive to assure 
that the jumper is only on the set of pins labeled DS0.  There are probably 
other jumpers too but don't disturb them. There may not be terminators on 
the 5.25" drive if it had been previously used as an E drive (2nd floppy on 
a pc.) in which case a set should be scrounged and installed.  There may be 
two in single inline format, or one in DIL format, looks like an integrated 
circuit socket, depends on the style of sockets for them on the 5.25" 
drive.

If you've done it right, you should see only the led on the drive being 
addressed come on when you do a "dir0" or "dir1", 0 being the 5.25" and 1 
being the 3.5".

> ________________________________
> From: Bill Pierce <ooogalapasooo at aol.com>
> To: coco at maltedmedia.com
> Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2012 5:51 PM
> Subject: Re: [Coco] Disk drive question
> 
> 
> Sounds like a winner Gene, thanks. I will give the "complete" cleaning a
> try. Mike gets back from Mexico on the 1st and will be sending me his
> boots for the hard drives then. From what he's told me, he's basically
> left the boot disk in drive 0 forever and just turned on the machine
> and the Eagle interface would autonatically boot OS9 if you do nothing.
> Once running he only used the Hard Drives and used the 5.25 80trk (d2)
> & 3.5 80trk (d1) for ocassional backups. So he mostly worked from the
> hard drives and rarely used the floppies. He wouldn't have noticed the
> floppies getting slower as they sat in place for so long. I can say the
> system was spotless when I recieved it. No dust, no dirt, nothing. The
> insides of this system look shiney as if they were new. I did get quite
> a bit of "gunk" off the contacts though you couldn't see it till it
> showed on the tissue. The keyboard issue is driving me nuts though.
> Everytime I fix a key, another goes out. If all else fails, I'll pull
> th
> e eagle interface and get a Coco3 keyboard from Cloud9 and be done with
> it.
> 
> thanks again
> Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3
> https://sites.google.com/site/dabarnstudio/
> Bill Pierce
> ooogalapasooo at aol.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: gene heskett <gheskett at wdtv.com>
> To: coco <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Sent: Wed, Jan 18, 2012 5:56 pm
> Subject: Re: [Coco] Disk drive question
> 
> On Wednesday, January 18, 2012 05:28:57 PM Bill Pierce did opine:
> > I've tried the drives in different combos. individually as well. For
> > the
> 
> most part I can't even boot from a single drive except for a Level 1
> v2,00 system master boot. Seems I read somewhere long ago that the RS
> factory disks were written to in a manner that even if your drive was
> in slight miss-alignment that in most cases the disk would read. This
> was for the fact that no 2 drives are exact in alignment and they
> wanted no problems. Since the RS disk will boot and no "created" disk
> will boot, it makes me wonder about alignment.
> 
> light miss-understanding there I'd say.  And the next thing I would do
> is o get one of those shack oilers with the long tube & a cap on the
> end of he tube. Its even got a pocket clip on it. Open up the drive
> boxes & emove the drives and using some painters alcohol, not that
> imitation stuff alled rubbing which is up to 70% water, and some q-tips
> and clean the gunk nd old dried out lube off the shiny rods that the
> head carriage slides in nd out on.  With power off, you can slide that
> back and forth and clean ntil they are "lox clean".  If the drive has a
> motor with a long spiral ut screw for a shaft on the back of the drive,
> clean that screw till its lso shiny all the way to the bottom of the
> groove.  Then apply a couple rops of that oil and work it back and
> forth till its well distributed. On he screw drive too if the drive has
> one.  While you are that close to it, he heads can also be cleaned, but
> get a fresh q-tip for every time you wet t with the alcohol, never
> putting a dirty q-tip back in the alcohol to ontaminate it.  It goes
> w/o saying that head cleaning s/b done gently so s not to spring the
> head suspension.
> Put it all back together and see if it will work.  I'd bet the stepper
> oise the drive makes is a lot louder because it can now move easily and
> uickly from track to track, where before it was quiet, sort of ooozing
> rom track to track and possibly/probably losing steps.  It _should_ be
> asily heard. 
> Quiet drives are a sign of impending, if not current, trouble.
> I have a tube/needle of that oil here, with about 20 drops left in it,
> ushing 25 years old & blacker than coffee from all those years of light
> xposure, but it still works.
> 
> hat I'm using for clues here is that it won't read a disk created in
> it.  f the head can slide easily enough, then it should be able to read
> a disk ade in it better than any disk made in another, possibly draggy
> drive. his will not make it read a disk created before the above
> maintenance hough, because that disk will probably have the tracks
> quite a ways out of ilter.
> Cheers, Gene
> -
> There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
> soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
> Ed Howdershelt (Author)
> y web page: <http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene>
> n general, if you think something isn't in Perl, try it out, because it
> sually is.  :-)
>             -- Larry Wall in <1991Jul31.174523.9447 at netlabs.com>
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Cheers, Gene
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
My web page: <http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene>
The amount of time between slipping on the peel and landing on the
pavement is precisely 1 bananosecond.

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