Ever have a floppy drive suddenly stop working?

[+OLD CS1]

Dammit if one of my two floppies did not decide to just up and die on me. It was a scary moment, as I though perhaps my not-inexpensive DSDD floppy controller had been affected by static (it has been on the living room floor for a good six months.) But after changing out the cable and swapping floppy positions, it turns out my Mitsubishi MF501B-312UD in DSK1 position has stopped responding at least to head movement commands -- though it could be more circuitry involved.

 

Anyway -- anyone ever have this happen? I mean, I generally expect drives to misbehave or otherwise show some signs of failing before just kicking the bucket.

 

In any case, while I would like to have two floppies in the PEB, I managed to pull myself up out of grief enough to take a mounting bay from a SuperMicro server case and install a 100MB SCSI hard drive I recently acquired from eBay. (Sadly, during installation I found that part of the drive wall had somehow been peeled away, exposing the internal platter. Meh, it still runs, so it is duct-taped until it dies.)

 

So, in addition to asking about SFDDS (Sudden Floppy Drive Death Syndrome,) I figured I would show off my hard drive work, as well. A few notes: 1) I did not do the modifications on the PEB to hold two drives, 2) the sticker is no longer accurate (of course) as the Mitsubishi MF501B-312UD is dead and removed, and 3) notice the positioning of the cables and interfaces and that the cable pass-through in to the drive cavity is just wide enough for a narrow 50-pin SCSI cable.

 

Eh, while I am at it, anyone want the old Mitsubishi drive to play with? I have neither the time nor the motivation right now to troubleshoot.

[John Doe]

Edited February 22, 2014 by Tony Knerr

[marc.hull]

Dammit if one of my two floppies did not decide to just up and die on me. It was a scary moment, as I though perhaps my not-inexpensive DSDD floppy controller had been affected by static (it has been on the living room floor for a good six months.) But after changing out the cable and swapping floppy positions, it turns out my Mitsubishi MF501B-312UD in DSK1 position has stopped responding at least to head movement commands -- though it could be more circuitry involved.

 

Anyway -- anyone ever have this happen? I mean, I generally expect drives to misbehave or otherwise show some signs of failing before just kicking the bucket.

 

In any case, while I would like to have two floppies in the PEB, I managed to pull myself up out of grief enough to take a mounting bay from a SuperMicro server case and install a 100MB SCSI hard drive I recently acquired from eBay. (Sadly, during installation I found that part of the drive wall had somehow been peeled away, exposing the internal platter. Meh, it still runs, so it is duct-taped until it dies.)

 

So, in addition to asking about SFDDS (Sudden Floppy Drive Death Syndrome,) I figured I would show off my hard drive work, as well. A few notes: 1) I did not do the modifications on the PEB to hold two drives, 2) the sticker is no longer accurate (of course) as the Mitsubishi MF501B-312UD is dead and removed, and 3) notice the positioning of the cables and interfaces and that the cable pass-through in to the drive cavity is just wide enough for a narrow 50-pin SCSI cable.

 

Eh, while I am at it, anyone want the old Mitsubishi drive to play with? I have neither the time nor the motivation right now to troubleshoot.

 

 

SFDDS is the way it goes in my experience. Best to hold a viking funeral for it (if you have a body of water available.)

[RXB]

Dammit if one of my two floppies did not decide to just up and die on me. It was a scary moment, as I though perhaps my not-inexpensive DSDD floppy controller had been affected by static (it has been on the living room floor for a good six months.) But after changing out the cable and swapping floppy positions, it turns out my Mitsubishi MF501B-312UD in DSK1 position has stopped responding at least to head movement commands -- though it could be more circuitry involved.

 

Anyway -- anyone ever have this happen? I mean, I generally expect drives to misbehave or otherwise show some signs of failing before just kicking the bucket.

 

In any case, while I would like to have two floppies in the PEB, I managed to pull myself up out of grief enough to take a mounting bay from a SuperMicro server case and install a 100MB SCSI hard drive I recently acquired from eBay. (Sadly, during installation I found that part of the drive wall had somehow been peeled away, exposing the internal platter. Meh, it still runs, so it is duct-taped until it dies.)

 

So, in addition to asking about SFDDS (Sudden Floppy Drive Death Syndrome,) I figured I would show off my hard drive work, as well. A few notes: 1) I did not do the modifications on the PEB to hold two drives, 2) the sticker is no longer accurate (of course) as the Mitsubishi MF501B-312UD is dead and removed, and 3) notice the positioning of the cables and interfaces and that the cable pass-through in to the drive cavity is just wide enough for a narrow 50-pin SCSI cable.

 

Eh, while I am at it, anyone want the old Mitsubishi drive to play with? I have neither the time nor the motivation right now to troubleshoot.

 

 

SFDDS is the way it goes in my experience. Best to hold a viking funeral for it (if you have a body of water available.)

 

 

I have one 5 1/4 drive and that is it. The other died so using one is like using a Model T to drive back and forth to work, bad idea and going to be expensive. The 3 1/2 work fine and are a dime a dozen so just use them.

[+OLD CS1]

@Tony

 

Yup. WHT SCSI-E with the DMA board. As for the floppy controller, off the top of my head it is the SNUG DSDD floppy controller with battery-backed clock -- my brain is fuzzy right now, so Marc would have to confirm as I got it from him.

 

@Marc

 

I have a drainage culvert under the driveway which collects water. Could use that.

 

@RXB

 

My problem with using a 3.5" drive is, in my experimentations, an HD floppy works but only steps across half of the drive surface. I suspect that a real DD drive would step across the entire surface. More correct, but chances are it would not be swappable with others using HD drives.

 

 

I would like to think that it would not be difficult to provide HD floppy support to the TI by expanding upon existing DSRs and on top of existing hardware with new controllers. Or, for that matter, taking a page from these floppy hardware developers to making an entire interface out of FPGAs. Of course, I am mostly talking out of my ass since my knowledge of both is just enough to speculate against the abilities of mythical other people.

 

 

(BTW, anyone else having problems with the multiquote functions of the AA board?)

Edited May 1, 2011 by OLD CS1

[+InsaneMultitasker]

One of my Mitsumi 5.25" drives did this sort of thing a few months ago. Turned out to be one of the jumpers had worked loose far enough to lose contact without falling off the pins. The drive light turned on, the motor spun, but it would not read properly. Just for kicks check all of your jumpers and resistor packs as applicable.

[marc.hull]

@Tony

 

Yup. WHT SCSI-E with the DMA board. As for the floppy controller, off the top of my head it is the SNUG DSDD floppy controller with battery-backed clock -- my brain is fuzzy right now, so Marc would have to confirm as I got it from him.

 

@Marc

 

I have a drainage culvert under the driveway which collects water. Could use that.

 

@RXB

 

My problem with using a 3.5" drive is, in my experimentations, an HD floppy works but only steps across half of the drive surface. I suspect that a real DD drive would step across the entire surface. More correct, but chances are it would not be swappable with others using HD drives.

 

 

I would like to think that it would not be difficult to provide HD floppy support to the TI by expanding upon existing DSRs and on top of existing hardware with new controllers. Or, for that matter, taking a page from these floppy hardware developers to making an entire interface out of FPGAs. Of course, I am mostly talking out of my ass since my knowledge of both is just enough to speculate against the abilities of mythical other people.

 

 

(BTW, anyone else having problems with the multiquote functions of the AA board?)

 

HD drives work just fine with the TI provided you use DD floppies, Tape over the HD hole on the floppy or mod the drive to bypass the HD detection (epoxy on the switch works...) The stepping is not a function of being HD or DD. It is a track question and is dependent on the FDC. I would guess that most if not all 3.5" drives are capable of 80 tracks so this should not be an issues as far as trading disks. The only FDC's I know of that can do 80 tracks are the Myarc FDC & HFDC as well as a modified TI FDC. Mixing 80 track and 40 track can definitely be a problem. I think if you stay away from the modified TI DSR you should be safe as I think it double steps in 40 track mode.

 

In short provided you format with 40 tracks then disks should be interchangeable between HD drives and DD drives. Beside I would think that mailing a 3.5" floppy is a fairly rare occurrence. . It is nice to have both a 5.25" and 3.5" drive installed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[John Doe]

Edited February 22, 2014 by Tony Knerr

[RXB]

HD drives work just fine with the TI provided you use DD floppies, Tape over the HD hole on the floppy or mod the drive to bypass the HD detection (epoxy on the switch works...) The stepping is not a function of being HD or DD. It is a track question and is dependent on the FDC. I would guess that most if not all 3.5" drives are capable of 80 tracks so this should not be an issues as far as trading disks. The only FDC's I know of that can do 80 tracks are the Myarc FDC & HFDC as well as a modified TI FDC. Mixing 80 track and 40 track can definitely be a problem. I think if you stay away from the modified TI DSR you should be safe as I think it double steps in 40 track mode.

 

In short provided you format with 40 tracks then disks should be interchangeable between HD drives and DD drives. Beside I would think that mailing a 3.5" floppy is a fairly rare occurrence. . It is nice to have both a 5.25" and 3.5" drive installed.

 

 

The 80 track TI FDC DSR does not double step - ever. If you have questions about it (the DSR), I would be the person to ask, I think. :axe:

 

Tony

 

 

 

In the P.U.N.N. group we had Mike, can not remember last name for sure, but he had a TI 80 track controller at CRU at >1F00 and another 40 track TI controller at >1100 and he only had 2 drives on each card.

Mike was a engineer at Intel and was buddies with Al Kinney the former PUNN president. He was also the guy that did all the hardware for the PUNN BBS using 2 128 Morning Star cards.

Anyway I seem to remember Mike saying what Tony just pointed out about the double step. But I think it was a Firmware DSR problem as the spacing accross the disk, so Mike said there was not enough DSR space to make them compatible.

I suppose this could be fixed if someone made multiple banked DSR to updated this.

[marc.hull]

 

HD drives work just fine with the TI provided you use DD floppies, Tape over the HD hole on the floppy or mod the drive to bypass the HD detection (epoxy on the switch works...) The stepping is not a function of being HD or DD. It is a track question and is dependent on the FDC. I would guess that most if not all 3.5" drives are capable of 80 tracks so this should not be an issues as far as trading disks. The only FDC's I know of that can do 80 tracks are the Myarc FDC & HFDC as well as a modified TI FDC. Mixing 80 track and 40 track can definitely be a problem. I think if you stay away from the modified TI DSR you should be safe as I think it double steps in 40 track mode.

 

In short provided you format with 40 tracks then disks should be interchangeable between HD drives and DD drives. Beside I would think that mailing a 3.5" floppy is a fairly rare occurrence. . It is nice to have both a 5.25" and 3.5" drive installed.

 

 

The 80 track TI FDC DSR does not double step - ever. If you have questions about it (the DSR), I would be the person to ask, I think. :axe:

 

Tony

 

I stand corrected . So what.... you write it or something ?

[John Doe]

Edited February 22, 2014 by Tony Knerr

[RXB]

I stand corrected . So what.... you write it or something ?

 

Yup, file is attached. Released on 7-15-01. I think Rich may be talking about a version done before mine that I got the idea from. That version was E-X-T-R-E-M-E-L-Y slow as the error checking wasn't done properly and all 3 drives had to be 80 track with no 40 track options. Read the docs for more info. I've got two cards with the DSK1 40 track, DSK2&3 80 track option here if anyone is interested -

I never use them anymore, but tested them recently and they work fine.

 

Tony

 

Tony

 

You are right it was used on the BBS computer as they had no Hard Drive for it. Also why Mike had two floppy controllers. One 80 track with 2 drives and one 40 track with 2 drives.

Edited May 2, 2011 by RXB

[+retroclouds]

 

I stand corrected . So what.... you write it or something ?

 

Yup, file is attached. Released on 7-15-01. I think Rich may be talking about a version done before mine that I got the idea from. That version was E-X-T-R-E-M-E-L-Y slow as the error checking wasn't done properly and all 3 drives had to be 80 track with no 40 track options. Read the docs for more info. I've got two cards with the DSK1 40 track, DSK2&3 80 track option here if anyone is interested -

I never use them anymore, but tested them recently and they work fine.

 

Tony

 

That's some cool stuff! Thanks for sharing

[+OLD CS1]

Holy crap, very cool, Tony! So, if I understand correctly, this is a DSR to be installed on a standard TI FDC, and this would still only support single-density per the on-board controller? I suspect my answers may be in the archive... heheheh

[+acadiel]

There was another ROM version for the TI Controller (the Guion mod). See attached and unarchive. There should be a README.

 

Permission from the creator's father:

 

I hereby give my permission to copy the code of my son,

John P. Guion, as used in the Texas Instruments Disk

Controller modifications. It may be copied for personal

use only and may not be sold, resold or used in a

product for sale. In other words I grant this license

for free and I expect the fruits of using the code to

be, likewise, free.

 

Louis I. Guion

Dallas, Texas

June 10, 2001

JPG_Prom.exe.zip

Edited May 23, 2011 by acadiel