[Coco] Yet Another Disk Pak Issue (was Re: Help reviving an old CoCo 2)

[Joel Ewy]

On 11/26/2014 07:43 PM, John Goerzen wrote:
> Arthur Flexser <flexser at ...> writes:
>
> [ Art replies to me saying I'm buying a FD-501 pak on eBay ]
>
>> Even if it doesn't work, might be useful as a source of chips to try
>> swapping with identical ones from the other controller to see if that
>> revives the first one.  A bad WD1773, the main disk controller chip, seems
>> like a likely suspect.
> So the pak arrived today.  I can make it work - sometimes.  About 50% of the
> time, when the disk controller pak is inserted, the computer powers up to a
> green screen and... nothing else.  Just an empty green screen.  Occasionally
> there are other random display artifacts.  Wiggling or bumping the cartridge
> seems to have an effect, so I suspect the problem is contacts on this one.
>
> I tried cleaning them with contact cleaner and a Q-tip, and although they
> weren't visibly dirty, that did get some off.  I don't want to be too
> abrasive, and I'm not convinced this will really solve the problem, but --
> ideas at this point?
>
> I don't want to keep sinking money into controller paks, but there seems to
> be nobody selling them other than "as-is".
>
> Thanks,
>
> John
>
>
Did you ever get a floppy controller to work reliably?  If you are who I 
think you are, we've met once and live near each other.  I have a lot of 
CoCo hardware and can loan you a known good disk controller for testing, 
or test your controllers on known good CoCos.

JCE