Happy 1050 board failing

[witchy]

Hi folks,

 

Today I was reminded that one of my 1050 drives had an original Happy board in it so I dug it out and degreased the head guides so they'd actually move, bit of machine oil later and it would happily read disks.

 

Some of the disks wouldn't boot however and some searching showed I probably needed to set the drive to UnHappy mode which I did. Trouble is I now can't get it back. The docs say turn off drive for 10 secs and it will return to happiness but mine says 'the drive cannot be programmed' and it remains undetected as a Happy drive.

 

There's only 2 6264 SRAMs, a 6502, an EEPROM and an unmarked chip on that board (GAL?) so I've been puzzling as to how it's set to UnHappy mode, given that a power cycle will normally return it to normal. I'm guessing at startup time the whole EPROM is copied into RAM and executed so the Warp software just changes a bit in RAM to UnHappy the drive.

 

Anyone seen this behaviour before? I can easily swap the RAM but I don't want to throw £10 at something that might not fix the problem.

 

Also, these days there are SIO2PC cables and various ways to fake the 1050's presence so am I wasting my time trying to fix the Happy board?

 

Cheers!

 

[+Nezgar]

It should always revert back to buffered read (fast) mode after a power cycle. All programming is cleared. Definitely sounds odd. Are you able to replace the original 6507 CPU and ROM (or swap from another 1050) to see if the rest of the drive functions ok as stock?

 

I have an old knock off board that also started acting up. Initially i could run it for an hour or so, then afterwards it would just lockup. Then after a few days the time to death after poweron rapidly declined - 10 5 1 minute, seconds etc. Leave it off for a week, turn it on, it might work fine for 5 minutes... This drive did get some humidity exposure (aka wet) from a basement flood a decade ago, and hadnt been powered on since, so I highly suspect some damage to something on the board... I did put some orders for replacement CPU and RAM for the board to see if I can revive it for fun.

 

I was delighted to discover I could purchase new re-made happy boards from atariMax, and the drive has been 'happy' since then with the new replacement, but I'm curious to give a last stab at the glitched board.

 

The happy is a real time saver with the buffered warp speed for me for my project to copy my boxes of real disks to ATR's to back them up... and useful for backing up copy-protected disks, and of course it adds Double-Density support. If you don't have much on floppy anymore then yeah it might not be a big loss...

Edited June 12, 2017 by Nezgar

[ijor]

There's only 2 6264 SRAMs, a 6502, an EEPROM and an unmarked chip on that board (GAL?) so I've been puzzling as to how it's set to UnHappy mode, given that a power cycle will normally return it to normal. I'm guessing at startup time the whole EPROM is copied into RAM and executed so the Warp software just changes a bit in RAM to UnHappy the drive.

 

Are you sure two 6264 chips? This doesn't seem to be a Happy. Certainly not an original board. Please provide a picture of the board and someone might be able to identify it. Might be a clone that emulates multiple enhancements.

[witchy]

Aye, after I'd posted that I spoke to the lad who gave it to me many years ago, it's actually a 'Chip' clone, not a Happy. This probably changes my whole line of questioning! I'll post a pic in a bit.

 

Cheers

[1050]

What DOS are you using? It may come down to doing a run at memory 0x07E0

to reinitialize the DOS. Sometimes pressing RESET does the same thing but

without knowing your DOS, maybe that won't be enough by itself?

 

Full info on Chip clone, please proceed.

[witchy]

 

This is the board, on the back it says "ISP 1986"

 

All I'm booting is the Warp Speed V7 utility disk that was with the drive and initially it did pick up D1 as a Happy drive, but I'm suspecting there's maybe a heat problem in there because it works from stone cold then fails after a while. The drive works ok otherwise, or at least boots DOSIII and KDOS. I do have 2 more drives but one is suspect. Also looking at the pictures I took yesterday the Warp Speed utility thought the drive was a Happy 810, not a 1050.

 

Let me know if that pic is too big and I'll resize it

 

Cheers,

[+Nezgar]

Looks like you have an IS Plate. Check out this thread, pictures match: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/254539-the-uk-1050-is-plate-upgrade/

 

Excerpt from the page 6 article http://www.page6.org/archive/issue_27/page_50.htmthat might explain why you intermittently see it as 'slow mode' - it's literally booting up as a stock 1050:

"One very useful feature of the drive is not mentioned in the manual - the drive can be switched to standard 1050 emulation by switching on with write protect enabled (either by a write protected disk or an unprotected disk partially inserted). ISP is enabled by switching on with the drive empty or an unprotected disk installed."

 

Still doesn't explain the drive going stone cold dead though, but maybe does the problem occur in both modes?

[witchy]

Oh NICE. Disk downloads too, good work there

 

 

or an unprotected disk partially inserted

 

 

Gah. I was doing that a LOT last night. I don't like turning the drive back on with a disk installed so I always eject it partially before turning on...

 

As it happens I've just spent the last couple of hours putting this together - http://ftp.pigwa.net/stuff/collections/atari_forever/Extension/Sio2PC/The%20SIO2PC%20interface.htm since I had all the spares kicking around.

 

Just about to test...

SaveSave

[witchy]

Looks like that's what it was, it's been happy (sorry) all afternoon. Off the back of your links I found the actual ISPlate utility disk and WARPDOS7 and eventually managed to transfer it to a real floppy once I'd changed the actual disk transport. It passed the high speed transfer diagnostics so all looks good.

 

In the course of all this my original Happy Floppy decided to give up the ghost but I think I have all the software as image files now.

 

I also made this:

 

 

so I'm sorted for transfers. I have a pair of 410 cassette recorders so I 'borrowed' the SIO cable from one of them...

 

Still haven't verified the IS Plate loading the original games I was given with the drive though

 

Thanks for the help!

SaveSave

SaveSave

[+Nezgar]

In the course of all this my original Happy Floppy decided to give up the ghost but I think I have all the software as image files now.

 

So, i'm curious - the IS Plate is fully Happy compatible? Like, you can use the happy 7.1 backup option to copy protected disks? If so, that's quite the feature to include support for, along with everything else on that board! Now I want one lol.

 

I can send you an ATR of Happy 7.1 software if you lost it.

[witchy]

Hi,

 

Sadly back after a week off

 

I got a Happy 7.1 disk with it which is the one that expired but I think I've got an ATR of it, I'll check now and let you know. Might be too hot for the thing to work at the mo!