Formatting problem with Atari 1050

[Hulsie]

Hi guys,

 

I am having a strange problem.

 

I have a Happy modified 1050 drive and it will no longer read/format dual density disks. I can still read disks that were formatted in single density, but that's it. This just happened out of the blue after transferrring some disks using APE.

 

I unplugged the APE device and turned the Happy mode off and it still is doing the same thing.

 

Any thoughts on why this is happening and how I can fix it?

[russg]

Hi guys,

 

I am having a strange problem.

 

I have a Happy modified 1050 drive and it will no longer read/format dual density disks. I can still read disks that were formatted in single density, but that's it. This just happened out of the blue after transferrring some disks using APE.

 

I unplugged the APE device and turned the Happy mode off and it still is doing the same thing.

 

Any thoughts on why this is happening and how I can fix it?

Here's a utility to set density. You can try it.

SD.zip

[+bob1200xl]

The controller in the 1050 has analog adjustments for the data separator. Your drive may be out of adjustment, where only the SD is close enough to work. Making those adjustments is fairly complex and requires an oscilloscope.

 

Otherwise, check your RPM and clean the head.

 

Can you format a SD disk on the bad drive and read it on a good drive?

 

Bob

[russg]

The controller in the 1050 has analog adjustments for the data separator. Your drive may be out of adjustment, where only the SD is close enough to work. Making those adjustments is fairly complex and requires an oscilloscope.

 

Otherwise, check your RPM and clean the head.

 

Can you format a SD disk on the bad drive and read it on a good drive?

 

Bob

I have a sick US Dblr 1050. I tried a spare mechanism, no help. I think it may be around the voltage supply, there are low readings compared to a good one at the

diodes near the power jack. Are there basic things I can check?

[Hulsie]

Thank you for your responses everybody!

 

I will try the software that russg provided first and see how that works.

 

I do have diagnostic software that will determine the RPM. Could the RPM be the cause for my problem? If so, is there a way to manually slow it down or speed it up?

[BillC]

I have a sick US Dblr 1050. I tried a spare mechanism, no help. I think it may be around the voltage supply, there are low readings compared to a good one at the

diodes near the power jack. Are there basic things I can check?

It's likely that the electrolytic power supply capacitors{the metal cylinders) are failing/shorting out and need to be replaced.

[1050]

I do have diagnostic software that will determine the RPM. Could the RPM be the cause for my problem? If so, is there a way to manually slow it down or speed it up?

 

Yes there is a blue, ten turn potentiometer near the rear of the mech but down on the motherboad on the very left hand side. The adjustment screw is usually covered up by a gob 'o who knows what intended to keep it where it was first adjusted to, but I don't think it moves around on it's own enough to justify another gob 'o whatever. 288 is the RPM to set it for, I always had to turn off Happy speed in order to use standard RPM programs like snail.bas.

 

I have no idea if the wrong RPM can cause your exact problems or not though.

[Hulsie]

Welp, I must have broken it :-(

 

I tested the RPM using a couple different utilities and the test showed that it was too slow (282 RPM). I found an old article from Page 6 magazine and followed that. I was excited because I seemed to be doing everything right -- I was adjusting the potentiometer and I got it right to 288 RPM on the nose and the utility said the speed was "just fine".

 

Now it won't read any disk at all. I don't know what I could have done to break it, because I didn't mess with anything else.

 

Oh well, this drive was used consistently for 27 years and was rock solid all that time, so I'm not too upset. I just need to re-read how to remove my Happy enhancement so I can put it in a future drive.

 

Does anybody want a dead 1050?

[+bob1200xl]

Don't give up just yet!

 

Can you format a disk on the drive? If you have disks written on a 282 RPM drive, you may have problems reading them on a 288 RPM unit. Did you try a commercial, factory-written disk?

 

Bob

[russg]

It's likely that the electrolytic power supply capacitors{the metal cylinders) are failing/shorting out and need to be replaced.

I replaced the capacitor closest to rear. Now it is much better, but still not working. Set to drive 1, it doesn't respond when computer turned on.

I does do a head movement when a disk is inserted. It just doesn't seek or find, the head doesn't move right. Set to D2:, with a disk

inserted, a DIR Sparta command will cause the disk to spin a little, but the head doesn't move at all and I get a 'device timeout'.

The head just moves a little forward and back when a disk is inserted and the door closed. I don't think it is doing the startup

find of track 0, or whatever it's supposed to do.

[Hulsie]

Bob,

 

I tried putting in several disks, both commercial and home-made, and none of them worked. It gave me that really slow BOOT ERROR, where it pauses and blips once every 5-10 seconds, giving me one BOOT ERROR message each time. I'm sure you know what I am talking about.

 

I used a trial-and-error approach to adjust the RPM speed very slowly back to how I had it originally, but this didn't help either. I cannot even get it to boot to DOS or anything to try formatting in the first place.

 

Luckily, a couple years back I bought a truckload of Atari stuff from AtariAge user JeremysArt and a 1050 drive was included in this. It seems to be working well so far, so I'm not too concerned with getting my old one working. 1050 (the user) has offered to take the dead one off my hands. The switch is kinda interesting, because it is clear that my replacement drive wasn't used nearly as much as my old one was. The disks seem to go in "tighter" (not sure how else to explain it) and the gate to hold the disk in stays in place more firmly.

 

Thank you for your help, though!

Edited May 28, 2013 by Hulsie