Atari XF551 & 1050 don't format Disks

[atari_thomas]

I have serveral floppy stations, f.e. some 1050 and one XF551 with the following issue:

 

Floppies first behave 'normal'. I can boot any DOS on any densities with these stations properly.

After I have booted up I insert a new 5,25" disk into the drive and try to format this disk with my OS (S/E/D/Qu).

 

Format procedure starts and all forty tracks get formatted (head moves forty times).

Then these floppies try to write the directory onto the disk but obviously not successful.

 

I get an error on screen and the disk is eventually not formatted ...

 

Did anyone had that problem, too?

[+bob1200xl]

Does this happen on all your drives?

 

Are you using HD disks? They will not work in any of your drives.

 

You can get an error like that if the drive and DOS are not set to the same density. In most instances, if you want to format a DD disk with something like DOS 2.0, you have to boot the DOS from a DD disk and then format the new disk.

 

Bob

[atari_thomas]

Well I'm not using any HD disks, only SD or DD.

This is only happening on a few drives of mine collection.

Strange, that two weeks ago my XF worked properly and just now this issue is showing up.

[+bob1200xl]

So, you can read existing disks... can you write to them? Not format, just copy a small file to them?

 

What DOS are you using?

 

You can format a disk on some of your drives, but, using the same disk, not on others?

 

Bob

[Rybags]

With a format on 810 or 1050 the head should actually move ~ 80 times (there's often a seek operation first).

First 40 is the format, next 40 is a readback verify operation, then the drive should return information to the computer re if there's any bad sectors.

 

If there's any bad sectors, most (all?) Doses will reject the operation and not attempt to create a filesystem.

[atari_thomas]

This morning I resoldered lot's of the pins on my XF pcb, especially the pins of the SIO connectors and the pins of some ICs, although they looked good.

 

Well ... now the drive is formatting my disks again ... let's see how long that lasts.

[RodCastler]

Let us know if that worked. If it did, I'll have to perform some soldering over the weekend and see if that fix my very same issue.

[+SoulBuster]

Just be careful, the XF551 has the worst PCB of any Item I have had the pleasure of working on. The traces are only on one side and they pull off real easy. Do not use anything over a 30 amp and I would recommend a 15.