[Coco] Disk drive question
Bill Pierce
ooogalapasooo at aol.com
Wed Jan 18 22:37:58 EST 2012
Wasn't there a problem running the FD-501 with a Coco 3? Seems like it was a voltage problem. Something like no 12v on the Coco 3 and the FD-501s need the 12v? Or was this the FD-500? I remember reading somewhere that you needed the FD-502 for a Coco 3. This may even apply to some of the later Coco 2s. Seems like you had to have a Multipak to use them as the Multipak supplied the proper voltages.
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 10:26 pm
Subject: Re: [Coco] Disk drive question
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
. All 3.5" drives are programmed to be drive 1, and the twist in the end
ection of a pc drive cable make it drive 0.
2. I have always attacked it as a cabling problem because the shack
upplied cables have missing contacts in the card edge connectors.
That means I disassemble the connectors by removal from the cable and
btain some that have all 34 contacts installed, and install those in their
lace. With a card edge to DIL drive adapter for the 3.5" drive, put it on
he middle connector, and check the jumpers on the 5.25" drive to assure
hat the jumper is only on the set of pins labeled DS0. There are probably
ther jumpers too but don't disturb them. There may not be terminators on
he 5.25" drive if it had been previously used as an E drive (2nd floppy on
pc.) in which case a set should be scrounged and installed. There may be
wo in single inline format, or one in DIL format, looks like an integrated
ircuit socket, depends on the style of sockets for them on the 5.25"
rive.
If you've done it right, you should see only the led on the drive being
ddressed come on when you do a "dir0" or "dir1", 0 being the 5.25" and 1
eing 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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heers, 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>
he amount of time between slipping on the peel and landing on the
avement is precisely 1 bananosecond.
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