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Help! Weirdness and insanity!


Opry99er

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Quick rundown:

 

At the CTIUG meeting, we had an issue with a PBox or card or something.

 

We were able to read and write to disks just fine, and we initialized and formatted a couple of disks.

 

On our third initialization attempt, the system refused to format a disk. It still reads and writes just fine, but it will not initialize. We tried multiple 32k cards, multiple disks, and 3 different disk managers. We also swapped drives.

 

We can read previously formatted disks, AND write to them--just cannot format/initialize.

 

 

What in the good hell would cause this?

 

 

Consoles tried:

 

Modified console (Vic Steerup)

Unmodified console (Ron Klein)

 

 

32k tried:

 

32k onboard a RAMDisk

Standard TI 32k

 

 

Drives tried:

 

Two separate 5.25" TEAC half height double sided drives

 

 

Disk managers tried;

 

MENU Disk manager (on RAMDisk)

DM1000 (on FinalGROM)

TI standard Disk Manager 2 cartridge

DM1000 (on XB2.7 cart)

 

 

Floppies tried:

 

4 different brands, all known to work on other systems.

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I just tried moving the controller. That did not seem to help. I am still able to read and write disks without issue, just can't initialize them. Such a strange issue! What part(s) in the controller could fail and still allow most functions to work?

 

Thanks everyone for your help so far. Really appreciate it!

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If you have one of the disks you formatted before things went flakey I would VERIFY that disk to see if all sectors check ok. I then would check that same disk in another system. Possibilitys I thought of were head alignment went south or motor speed if off. Another possibility is see how free the head moves on the rails.

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If this FDC card has socketed IC's, take each one out and test it on a Mini Pro or some similar device to see if there are problems there. You haven't stated a controller brand so at this time I am assuming a TI controller, so unless there has been mods done in the past, I would say that all the IC's are soldered straight to the board, which will make it much harder to diagnose. I just got two Foundation Memory cards functional again last week by testing and finding some bad IC's, due to age and storage.

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I appreciate everyone's suggestions so far. As an FYI, this issue is being experienced with 2 identical TEAC drives. I only have a cable that supports the use of a single floppy drive, but swapping drives (for testing) produces the same results. Disks can be read and written to, just not formatted. If I write to a disk in one drive, it can be read back without issue on the other drive. I am looking for one more 5.25" drive to add to the test.

 

Thanks!

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Quick rundown:

 

At the CTIUG meeting, we had an issue with a PBox or card or something.

 

We were able to read and write to disks just fine, and we initialized and formatted a couple of disks.

 

On our third initialization attempt, the system refused to format a disk. It still reads and writes just fine, but it will not initialize. We tried multiple 32k cards, multiple disks, and 3 different disk managers. We also swapped drives.

 

We can read previously formatted disks, AND write to them--just cannot format/initialize.

 

 

What in the good hell would cause this?

 

I looked for IO Error 43 in the TI disk DSR source code. I did not find it yet.
It means Illegal Operation on Seek/Rewind/Restore.
Some guesses:
1. I wonder what is the expected error when you enable Protect Disk (the anti-copy protection flag, letter P on sector 0)
2. There was an error trying to move the head to a particular track (but this should be a 6 not a 3)
Maybe it is a power supply issue. Try a different Pbox? Drives draw the most power when spinning and seeking.
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If this FDC card has socketed IC's, take each one out and test it on a Mini Pro or some similar device to see if there are problems there. You haven't stated a controller brand so at this time I am assuming a TI controller, so unless there has been mods done in the past, I would say that all the IC's are soldered straight to the board, which will make it much harder to diagnose. I just got two Foundation Memory cards functional again last week by testing and finding some bad IC's, due to age and storage.

 

Yes, it is a TI controller. I'm looking for any working loaner to see if it helps with the issue.

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I looked for IO Error 43 in the TI disk DSR source code. I did not find it yet.
It means Illegal Operation on Seek/Rewind/Restore.
Some guesses:
1. I wonder what is the expected error when you enable Protect Disk (the anti-copy protection flag, letter P on sector 0)
2. There was an error trying to move the head to a particular track (but this should be a 6 not a 3)
Maybe it is a power supply issue. Try a different Pbox? Drives draw the most power when spinning and seeking.

 

 

Power supply has been mentioned twice. I do have access to an empty (spare) PEB and will be trying that out as well.

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As long as you use only 90 KiB diskettes in the system, you could try FORMAT-DISK and/or DISK-HEAD with TI Forth to see whether sectors 0 – 3 can be written. See Chapter 5 of the TI Forth Instruction Manual (2nd LES Edition) in the TI-99/4A development resources thread.

 

...lee

 

Hi Lee. I'm interested in this test. I've never used Forth, but will look for it and see what happens. Thank you!

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  • 3 weeks later...

Latest updates.

 

Replaced the Disk Controller. Same issue. Can READ/WRITE but not initialize/format. Same behavior for both floppy drives. Tried numerous disk/disk brands.

 

Waiting for new floppy drive cable from Arcade Shopper.

 

Have another 5.25" drive I will try as well.

 

Still hard to believe 2 drives can be bad at the same time, but will continue to troubleshoot.

 

Can anything else in the PEB itself cause this issue?

 

Thanks!

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Latest updates.

 

Replaced the Disk Controller. Same issue. Can READ/WRITE but not initialize/format. Same behavior for both floppy drives. Tried numerous disk/disk brands.

 

Waiting for new floppy drive cable from Arcade Shopper.

 

Have another 5.25" drive I will try as well.

 

Still hard to believe 2 drives can be bad at the same time, but will continue to troubleshoot.

 

Can anything else in the PEB itself cause this issue?

 

Thanks!

Have you checked the drive models to be sure they are not 1.2 mb drives, first thing, google them if you don't know for sure they are 360k drives . Then I would have to say, you may have a logic chip failure in the flex card or a DSR conflict somewhere? Not knowing your set up. Also could be a signal not processing out of the side of the TI itself, but I am not an expert.

Edited by RickyDean
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  • 2 weeks later...

Hey everyone - latest update.

 

I was able to find another set of drives to borrow/test. Mitsumi D502 (aka TRS-80 Color Computer FD-502). I was able to obtain the correct molex power adapters (as these drives use a much smaller power plug). I was also able to figure out the correct jumper settings to set the drive select properly.

 

I am now able to initialize disks, but these drives have there own set of problems (perhaps need cleaning, etc.).

 

In any case, hard to believe I had 2 drives go bad (in the same way) and can do everything but initialize disks. Such a strange issue. I'm now looking for an inexpensive pair of good drives as I still like to use "old-school" disks on occasion.

 

Thank you for everyone's feedback and help!

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