DM2 and DM1000

[Opry99er]

I have noticed that I am having some major difficulties formatting 5.25" diskettes using Disk Manager 2. The drive will start "grinding" hard on every other sector or so, and it takes about forever to complete the cycle. I give up about 10 minutes in, not wanting to hear the grinding noise out of my old Shugart anymore.

 

I thought I had bad diskettes or my drive was going bad, but when I formatted using DM1000, it took the same floppy disk less than 30 seconds to complete, and it finished with 718 unused, 2 used.

 

I have repeated this multiple times over the last couple of days with multiple floppies, and each floppy I try returns the same results.

 

Is there something fundamentally different between these two disk managers and how they go about formatting floppy disks?

 

Both DM carts are on my XB2.7 suite.

 

Thanks in advance.

[+RXB]

Sounds like you need to grease the drives slider for the head moving back and forth.

 

Also one of the programs may be parking the heads each time, some badly written programs do this and cause massive amount of noise as the drive head keeps moving back and fourth.

Edited April 16, 2017 by RXB

[Opry99er]

I have never had this issue with DM2 before...

 

And using DM1000, there is hardly any noise at all from the drive.

[sparkdrummer]

I'd bet it has to do with the head step times in DM2. Seems to me that the cart was set for a head step of 16 or 20 ms. That's pretty slow for all but the oldest sssd drives.

[Opry99er]

Interesting....

[+Schmitzi]

Isn´t it the controller, doing the step timing ? (transparent to the app)

[+Schmitzi]

Are these new floppy disks, or were they used (formatted) on another system before ?

[Opry99er]

Unused, fresh floppies as well as pre-used disks, previously formatted to DSSD on the TI99.

 

Both choke with DM2--both work fine with DM1000.

Edited April 16, 2017 by Opry99er

[sparkdrummer]

Yeah, I think you're right Schmitzi. But, I also think the DM2 only tells the drive to step at slower speeds. I know it's much slower at initializing a disk than other dm's. Example is Advanced Diagnostics - it allows you to set the step speed that your drives could handle. Maybe one of our hardware gurus will chime in on this deal.

[Opry99er]

We aren't talking a matter of speed here. We are talking about a bad bad grinding sound as the drive freezes, sector by sector.

 

It is acting like every other sector is corrupted, essentially.

[Opry99er]

I will try to take a video later so you can see what it is doing.

[Shift838]

sounds like the drive may be bad. have you tried to swap it out to see?

[Opry99er]

No, I do not have another drive. But it reads, writes, and formats beautifully... I don't think the drive is bad.

 

Only issues I am having are when formatting new disks with DM2. Strange...

[+InsaneMultitasker]

Are you using the same total tracks and sides selections between programs?

 

Also, I thought those Shugart drives were single sided only. How are you formatting to 720 sectors?

[Shift838]

Are you using the same total tracks and sides selections between programs?

 

Also, I thought those Shugart drives were single sided only. How are you formatting to 720 sectors?

 

I know the old Shugart drives are only SS/SD.

[Opry99er]

Here is a video. At 1:10, you see a new error. No grinding of the head, just an error. Again, though, DM2 fails, DM1000 succeeds.

 

 

https://youtu.be/KQc7gOFXHrE

[mizapf]

Is it a standard TI disk controller? The error 41 is new to me.

[+InsaneMultitasker]

Do you know that your full-height drive is double-sided?

 

You are not verifying your format and there is no guarantee that any of the sectors on side 2 are formatted or accessible. You may fill up the first side and discover "errors" as you reach 50% capacity. Try verifying in DM1000 or try formatting to single side/single density with DM2.

[Opry99er]

I tried both double and single sided. I will do more testing and post results tonight.

[Opry99er]

Is it a standard TI disk controller? The error 41 is new to me.

 

Yes, standard.

[Shift838]

Yes, standard.

 

if it is the stock drive that came with the PEB then it is only Single Sided, Single Density and 40 tracks.

[Opry99er]

It is not. This PEB has gone through at least 3 full height 5.25" drives that I can remember.

 

My favorite was the IBM that I got with the PEB. It was a beast, and it has very unique sounds when it ran.

Edited April 17, 2017 by Opry99er

[+Schmitzi]

Error 41: "Record not found on print"

 

Maybe pull out the serial/printer card ? (and all other drives)

[Opry99er]

Okay, here is another video... this is the original behavior I was talking about.

 

In this video, all starts off well... It occasionally catches on a sector but quickly moves through it. At about 170 sectors or so, it really starts slowing down and grinding.

 

You can hear it, even through my screaming children.

 

After I shut off the video, it started doing it on every sector... Bad disk, right?

 

No.

 

It initialized properly on DM1000 as a 360 sector disk, no problems.

 

https://youtu.be/IHc5C4g_370

Edited April 17, 2017 by Opry99er

[+InsaneMultitasker]

Okay, here is another video... this is the original behavior I was talking about.

 

In this video, all starts off well... It occasionally catches on a sector but quickly moves through it. At about 170 sectors or so, it really starts slowing down and grinding.

 

You can hear it, even through my screaming children.

 

After I shut off the video, it started doing it on every sector... Bad disk, right?

 

No.

 

It initialized properly on DM1000 as a 360 sector disk, no problems.

 

https://youtu.be/IHc5C4g_370

This video shows DM2 verifying each sector. If you selected NO to the verification in DM1000 (as you did in your earlier video), you aren't comparing apples to apples.