hueyjones70 Posted July 22, 2017 Share Posted July 22, 2017 I am using a 130XE with two XF551 drives and I was formatting some old diskettes that had nothing worthwhile on them. After I had formatted 5 or 6 disks, I got an error 173 so I figured bad disk, then it happened on the next 3 I tried, I went back to one of the earlier disks and drive 2 gave me an error 144 when I tried to get a disk directory. I switched out SIO cables and then hooked up a 1050 as drive 2. Same results, drive 2 will not work correctly. I tried formatting one of the bad disks in drive 1 and everything worked perfectly. What could be the source of the problem, I have read some blogs about SIO problems with the 130XE due to resistors located near the SIO out port. HELP! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xebec Posted July 22, 2017 Share Posted July 22, 2017 My first instinct would be dirty drive head.. clean with rubbing alcohol carefully.. Error 144 is pretty generic, covers all sorts of things: Drive door open, no floppy present, write protected, sector not found, sector unwritable, sector bad CRC, sector unreadable, wrong track ID, and probably a few others. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hueyjones70 Posted July 22, 2017 Author Share Posted July 22, 2017 I changed disk drives and the problem remained. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted July 22, 2017 Share Posted July 22, 2017 Your post didn’t mention it, but when you swapped out cables and moved drives around, did you reboot and let the Atari reset the SIO bus? When you had troubles, did you change power supplies on the drives just to rule that out? And have you tried another DOS, again to help isolate the possible causes? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hueyjones70 Posted July 23, 2017 Author Share Posted July 23, 2017 As it turns out the disk drive has just gone BAD, the one I substituted was either already bad or went bad about the 2nd time it tried to read a disk. I took them apart, cleaned the drive heads and watched them try to read a disk then tried both drives on an 800XL and a regular 800 and they were NOGO. Now I guess I will try to sell them for parts because I don't know enough about electronics to repair them and I don't know of anyone that does repairs anymore. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyle22 Posted July 23, 2017 Share Posted July 23, 2017 There are people here that do repairs. Let us know what area you live in, and I'm sure someone will offer help. Unfortunately, I have no XF parts, but I could burn an EPROM if you need. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
russg Posted July 23, 2017 Share Posted July 23, 2017 As it turns out the disk drive has just gone BAD, the one I substituted was either already bad or went bad about the 2nd time it tried to read a disk. I took them apart, cleaned the drive heads and watched them try to read a disk then tried both drives on an 800XL and a regular 800 and they were NOGO. Now I guess I will try to sell them for parts because I don't know enough about electronics to repair them and I don't know of anyone that does repairs anymore. This is obvious. You didn't mention the drive select switches. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.