Instructions for second drive in Megafile 44, Finally!

[+SoulBuster]

I recently acquired a Megafile 44 and read some topics that it was possible to add a hard drive to it.

 

I scoured the forums and found vague instructions, incomplete instructions and instructions that were downright wrong.

 

I spent three hours today testing and can now explain exactly how to do it. This setup even works with a Megafile 30 as the first HD in the chain.

 

This is not a screw by screw description because if you are willing to open your MF44, then you know how to accomplish everything in my explanation.

 

1. Open you MF44 and take off the shielding inside. You will notice there are two 50 pin headers one of which the SyQuest 44 is plugged into. The other one is empty.
2. You will also notice there is a bracket that is specifically made for adding a hard drive along with an additional power plug and an activity light plug for the HD. If your HD power connector comes straight out of the back your drive, it may not fit when attached to the bracket. I zip tied the HD to the bracket, seems solid enough.
3. Make sure that the SQ44 drive is set to drive Unit 0 and the HD you are using is set to unit 1. There is nothing else to do with the SQ44 drive. Leave it where it is.
4. Remove the mounting bracket from the chassis and mount the HD to the bracket, but do not mount the bracket back to the chassis yet.
5. With an additional 50 pin ribbon cable, attach it to the HD and the empty 50 pin header, pin 1 to pin 1 of course.
6. Connect the power and the activity light cable if your hard drive has pins for it. It is not necessary to connect the activity light cable.
7. Mount the bracket to the chassis (If your HD power connector comes straight out of the back your drive, it may not fit when attached to the bracket. I zip tied the HD to the bracket, seems solid enough) replace the shielding, screw the case back together.
8. There are dip switches on the bottom of the MF44, turn 1 off, turn 2 on and turn 3 off.

I used HDDrive 10.03 and both drives show up. You can also test before putting everything back together to make sure the drive you are using does not have parity enabled. It will not show up if parity is enabled.

 

[walter_J64bit]

Say can you post some pics of the Megafile 44 showing the two drives, from what I read you can have two installed in a Megafile 30 too but the Megafile 30 only has one hard drive mounting the bracket from what I can tell there's no way to keep second hard drive inside of the Megafile 30 so I just didn't bother with adding a second hard drive to my Megafile 30.

[+SoulBuster]

Here is the MF44. See the distance between the drive and the power supply. That is because of the power plug. To actually mount the drive on the bracket that is underneath, the drive has to have a vertical power receptacle or you will need to change out the power plug with one that is at a 90 degree angle, if that would even work. This is the reason I zip tied the drive to the mounting bracket. It does not move.

 

Here are two picture of the Megafile 30 inside. The first shows that an additional data line is possible, but you would have to add a 20 pin header. You would also have to replace the 34 pin control cable with one that is longer and has another connector on it for the second drive.

 

The only place to even think about mounting another drive is in that empty space in the lower left. It would have to be a 3 1/2 in quarter height drive and you need to fashion a bracket to hold the drive above the PCB. But if you did that, a half height drive would be too tall to put the cover back on, that is why I said quarter height.

 

Also, that is an RLL interface. RLL drives at half height size were only at the most 60-80 MB. Is it worth it? I am not even sure a quarter height drive for an RLL interface was ever made. 3 1/2in drives are rare also.

[+SoulBuster]

I bought one of these to see if it will allow me to mount the drive on the bracket. I will report back after trying.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001VKQJ1W/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[walter_J64bit]

I've been looking on ebay for some time to see prices for MFM/RLL 3 1/2' drives it's not worth it but it would be fun just to have two 3 1/2' drives running in a Megafile 30.

[+SoulBuster]

I have 2 Megafile 30s and I want to put larger capacity drives in them. I have one 65 meg drive and plan to do just that. So I get where you are coming from. I like the original equipment also. I use the MF30s as my boot disks and have 300-500 meg drives as secondary's and MF44s (actually 4 are not MF44s, bust still SyQuest 44s)

 

I have 4 systems setup at all times.

Falcon with 32gig PATA SSD boot drive, SyQuest 44, 500 MB external HD

Mega STe with 300 MB internal HD, SyQuest 44, 300MB external HD

Mega 4 with MF30 boot drive, MF44 seen above with 300MB HD. This is my Atari branded system. All components are Atari, including the SC1224 monitor. Pizza box stack.

1040 STf 4 Meg with MF30 boot drive, SyQuest 44 (soon but not yet), 500 MB external HD

 

and to top that off, an I7 PC with a SyQuest 44 mounted in it (soon but not yet). It currently has Windows 10, but I may have to put XP on it to make the SCSI driver work correctly.

 

The SyQuest 44s are how I plan on moving stuff around.

[+SoulBuster]

I bought one of these to see if it will allow me to mount the drive on the bracket. I will report back after trying.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001VKQJ1W/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

51-Htt9LKWL__SL1200_.jpg

 

I received the cable, but unfortunately it still does not have enough room to mount the drive to the bracket using the existing holes. I will leave the drive strapped down using the zip-tie.

 

The SyQuest and Maxtor drive inside are working flawlessly.

[+SoulBuster]

Probably the best way to make the additional drive fit on the bracket would be to solder a "power extension tail" directly to the drive. That way you could still unplug the power.

 

Now that I know it can be done, I probably will take it out anyway. I recently made a purchased on eBay that had two hard drive enclosures. They both had working AdSCSI plus ST cards in them and I do not need to have the drive in the MF44 any more.

[+SoulBuster]

I acquired another Mega File 44 and it came with 3 surprises.

 

1. The SyQuest Mech did not work so I changed it for a working one. Success.

 

2. it had an additional hard drive already installed in it. A 200mb Conner. Whoever installed it ran into the same problem I had above with the power cable. The solution used was to dismantle the power cable end and plug the power lines directly into the HD, which gave enough room to mount the HD on the bracket. Electrical tape was used to keep all the lines separate and from touching the power supply. I am going to do some clean up in this area. Since it is already a mangled mess, I will try soldering the lines directly to the HD.

 

3. The host adapter of the MF44 had been discarded and an ICD Advantage Plus was mounted in its place. Not done very well either. It was pushed to the side to keep the power supply from touching it and was only secured down with one DB19 bolt. So I bolted down both DB19s with 4 bolts from some dead PC video cards. When I did this the card and the power supply were fighting for the space in between them. The power supply is mounted using 4 screws. 2 are also used to put the case together and 2 are screwed in from inside the case. In order for this to work, I will have to discontinue using the two nearest the Advantage Plus card. 1 is screwed from inside the case and 1 is also used to screw the case together. I bent the tabs with the holes up a bit to keep them from touching the Advantage Plus card and will rely on the other 2 screws to hold it in place. Not the best solution, but it is the best with what I have to work with. When assembled all items are solid and the SyQuest and Hard Drive work well.

[6BQ5]

Reviving an old thread ... I hope that's not against forum rules.

 

Has anyone tried adding a second drive or second device recently? I've been intrigued with the idea as soon as I saw all that extra space inside the enclosure.

 

Would love to hear your experiences!

[+SoulBuster]

This thread is not that old. I completed this at the end of last year.

 

If you plan to do this. Take your time. The molex power connector on the HD will hit the M44 Power supply when trying to attach the drive to the bracket, unless it is a vertical connector and you still mat have trouble. You can either do what I did and zip tie it to the bracket or de-solder and remove the molex plug on the drive and solder a molex "Tail" directly on the HD. I plan to change to this last option.

 

I now have 2 of these in working condition and thinking about doing a third.

[6BQ5]

I have some questions! Help?

 

Where did you find a 34-pin control cable that supports two drives? I remember these cables had a twist in part of the ribbon for the second drive.

 

Can the power supply in the Megafile 30 support a second device or drive? The hard drive seems to get its power from the supply through the main logic board. I see a sticker on the supply that gives a 3A rating for the 5V line and 1.6A (1.8A?) for the 12V line.

 

Here is a link to an image of the Megafile 30 with the top cover removed.

 

https://thumbs.worthpoint.com/zoom/images2/1/0516/05/atari-megafile-30-external-hard-disk_1_a8b6814163b39ced093225d0f38a64c8.jpg

 

There is a row of jumper pins. The jumper pins are labeled P-N-L-J-H-F-O-B. What are they for? Do they need to be set to enable the second drive? What about the nearby SW1?

 

Here is another image showing the jumper pins.

 

http://www.nightfallcrew.com/wp-content/gallery/atari-megafile-30/IMG_9346.jpg

 

I can see how the power supply can really get in the way of the second drive.

 

Thanks!

[+SoulBuster]

This mod is not for a Megafile 30, but rather the megafile 44

 

It is probably possible to add another HD to a mega File 30, but the power supply is not powerful enough. The Megafille 44 is.

 

You do not need a twist in the cable for the 34 pin cable on and RLL/MFM drive, that was for floppy drives. The data cable [20 pin] is what separates the drives. A megafile 30 has two ports for the data cable, but only 1 port is installed and the other is just holes in the motherboard. So you would need an IDC header for the second drive.

[6BQ5]

Thanks for the reply!

 

For some reason I had it in my head that your work applied to both the Megafile 30 and Megafile 44. I probably got too excited reading and skipped a few details.

 

What is the current rating of the power supply outputs in the Megafile 44? I wonder if it would be possible to swap in that power supply inside a Megafile 30.

 

And, thanks for clarifying the cable and it's lack of twist. It's been a long time since I handled any of these cable types.

[+SoulBuster]

Someone asked what the megafile 30 looked like inside so I added pics to show them.

 

I really do not know that much about voltages and amps when it come to electricity. If someone more knowledgeable could answer that question.

 

What I have heard about the M30 is that if you can start one drive and let it spin up, then start the second drive, it should work once both drives are spun up. I have not tried this. It would mean another power switch. One to power up the M30 and the 1st drive and one to power up the second drive. I really do not recommend this though.