Grizaptimus Posted April 25, 2015 Share Posted April 25, 2015 Hey there everyone I originally posted this on atari-forum but got no responses, anyway.. some time ago my falcon quit reading any disks. Being a poor college student I did not have the cash to get a replacement drive so I stuck it in the closet for awhile. Anyway I was able to get my TT back from my parents, so I figured why not try the Falcon's floppy out on the TT. Low and behold the drive works just fine, so I decided to try the TT's drive out in the falcon, errors errors and more errors.Because of this development I am now thinking that it might be the floppy controller in the falcon that bit the dust. Is there anyway that I could confirm that it is the floppy controller, or narrow it down further? tldr: Both Floppy drives work in TT, neither does in falcon. what can I do now to help track problem down? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Payne Posted April 25, 2015 Share Posted April 25, 2015 Doea the hard drive work in the falcon. They share an interupt so if the hdd is bad, the floppy will fail. Kinda frustrating if you don't know that. Bad design. Cause false positives. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ParanoidLittleMan Posted April 25, 2015 Share Posted April 25, 2015 It may be hard disk in Falcon, may be even floppy cable, connector. Confirming that the floppy controller chip is culprit remotely is not possible. Should be inspected by some expert. If there is no hard disk in Falcon, may go on Compact Flash usage instead floppy - that will cost not much. You need only 44pin IDE-CF adapter and 1 card. What should cost less than 20 Euros in case of 4 GB card. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Payne Posted April 25, 2015 Share Posted April 25, 2015 Yep. If there is no HDD, try replacing the ribbon cable. If that doesn't work, PLM is probably right about the controller chip. I also agree with the upgrade of the HDD to CF. If I didn't have an old 8 gig laptop drive lying around, that's the route I would have taken. The fact that 8 gigs is more that enough space (if you've filled 8 gigs of space on the Falcon, you need to get some sort of award or achievement certificate. ) but I think a total of 16 is possible if you format it with HDDriver. Good luck and let us know if you have further questions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grizaptimus Posted April 25, 2015 Author Share Posted April 25, 2015 Well I have not had time to do much testing, but the HD does seem to be bad. With the HD connected Falcon will not boot, with it disconnected I get no drive icons whatsoever on the desktop. Thanks for the quick responces!! looks like i need to grab a CF card and adaptor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tos5 Posted April 29, 2015 Share Posted April 29, 2015 Works Floppy without HD? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fletch Posted April 29, 2015 Share Posted April 29, 2015 I had a similar issue with my Falcon. The hard drive was failing and after I replaced the drive everything worked fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grizaptimus Posted May 8, 2015 Author Share Posted May 8, 2015 Hey guys, thanks for all the help. I was able to hook up a 40GB IDE drive that I found and low and behold it WORKS!!! Now I just need to find a formatting program for the drive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fletch Posted May 8, 2015 Share Posted May 8, 2015 Hey guys, thanks for all the help. I was able to hook up a 40GB IDE drive that I found and low and behold it WORKS!!! Now I just need to find a formatting program for the drive. You can try ICD Pro, which is old, but free : http://joo.kie.sk/?page_id=306 HDDRIVER is probably the best known, widely used, but costs a bit : http://hddriver.seimet.de/en/ Or PPERA's (PLM) driver which is newer and costs less than HDDRIVER : http://atari.8bitchip.info/pphdr.php Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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