[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."
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 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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