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XF551 3,5" clone


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  • 2 months later...
32 minutes ago, nowy80 said:

Hi

I prepared a short video with a floppy disk drive test by Zaxon. The film will be available on Tuesday.
English version


Polish version


I invite you to watch the material.

Regards Paweł  

Is this the 320XE that was talked about on Facebook ?

 

My apologies 320XE is

Lukasz Masko

Edited by Lastic
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8 hours ago, nowy80 said:

Hi

I prepared a short video with a floppy disk drive test by Zaxon. The film will be available on Tuesday.
English version


Polish version


I invite you to watch the material.

Regards Paweł  

I have to ask the question, because a lot of AtariAge members got burned by a member going by Zaxon some years ago, is this the same person?  He made a lot of promises for various projects wanting pre-order money, then never delivered or only completed a few orders.  I was one of the lucky ones.   But most weren't. 

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2 hours ago, Dropcheck said:

I have to ask the question, because a lot of AtariAge members got burned by a member going by Zaxon some years ago, is this the same person?  He made a lot of promises for various projects wanting pre-order money, then never delivered or only completed a few orders.  I was one of the lucky ones.   But most weren't. 

Thanks for the reminder.  I was on the multi month "waiting list".  Still, unlike sloopy(2 VBXEs paid for 9 years ago and an Amiga paid for last September) he did deliver in the end.

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Being a newcomer on the scene, I can't share previous experiences.

 

In my case zaxon was responsive,sent me the PCB instantly after payment .

I purchased it here :


https://www.sellmyretro.com/offer/details/37217

 

He also sent me detailed instructions after the sale on how to connect the wiring


http://www.eightbitclone.com/xfwew.html

 

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I bought the XF551 clone and floppy disk emulator for CPC6128. I've never had a bad experience with Zaxon. I don't know if we're talking about the same person. Under the video material is available email address to Zaxon. If anyone has questions, they can be sent.

 

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On 5/19/2019 at 2:14 PM, manterola said:

In my opinion, no use. That's why I think is important to get a sf314: so you get no only the functionality, but also the cool factor of the XE grey design. And that is a big part of the retro experience

 

On behalf of all ST owners, please take all of the SF354s instead.

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It looks like he's substituting a WD1770PH for the normal WD1772PH floppy controller.  Wonder how?  My experiments indicated that you could use the WD1770PH with a 5.25" drive, but when I tried a 3.5" drive I had to use the WD1772PH.  Conversely you could use a 8.0MHz OSC with the 3.5" drive, but you had to use a 8.333MHz or equivalent OSC circuit with the 5.25".  Looks like he's dividing down the 32MHz OSC to 8.0MHz. 

 

Interesting......

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20 minutes ago, Dropcheck said:

It looks like he's substituting a WD1770PH for the normal WD1772PH floppy controller.  Wonder how?  My experiments indicated that you could use the WD1770PH with a 5.25" drive, but when I tried a 3.5" drive I had to use the WD1772PH.  Conversely you could use a 8.0MHz OSC with the 3.5" drive, but you had to use a 8.333MHz or equivalent OSC circuit with the 5.25".  Looks like he's dividing down the 32MHz OSC to 8.0MHz. 

 

Interesting......

He mentioned in his page that the wd1770 DO work with 3.5" drives, just not using the HyperX firmware, so I assume that a 3.5" mech with wd1770 and Woodley 3.5 firmware should work... I don't have wd1770 to do tests...

Edited by manterola
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39 minutes ago, manterola said:

He mentioned in his page that the wd1770 DO work with 3.5" drives, just not using the HyperX firmware, so I assume that a 3.5" mech with wd1770 and Woodley 3.5 firmware should work... I don't have wd1770 to do tests...

I have also WD1770 installed in XF551 (3.5 "drive). I use HyperX firmware and I have some problems. Under HyperX and SpartaDos X saves floppies on 720KB. The problem is with reading such floppy disks. I show this problem in my video. In the future I will change the coaster to WD1772. The tested floppy disk drive has a bios switch installed.

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25 minutes ago, nowy80 said:

I use HyperX firmware and I have some problems. Under HyperX and SpartaDos X saves floppies on 720KB.

In my video, I'm able to format 720K floppies with what appears to be non-Hyper-XF firmware (this is confirmed by writing 700K of data to the desk and verifying it back), but the SDX formatter complains about the 80 track setting when formatting the disk. I take it this goes away with the Hyper ROM?

 

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17 minutes ago, flashjazzcat said:

In my video, I'm able to format 720K floppies with what appears to be non-Hyper-XF firmware (this is confirmed by writing 700K of data to the desk and verifying it back), but the SDX formatter complains about the 80 track setting when formatting the disk. I take it this goes away with the Hyper ROM?

 

 


I checked on SpartaDos X using HyperX / modified bios XF551. I was able to format 720KB floppy disks on both bios. However, I had a problem reading 720KB floppy disks on HypeX (WD1770). I change the bios with a switch. Modified Bios and HyperX formats easily with 80 tracks. HyperX reads such disks with errors. I have a bios switch on the front of the floppy disk drive.

 

_DSC2059.JPG

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1 hour ago, nowy80 said:

I checked on SpartaDos X using HyperX / modified bios XF551. I was able to format 720KB floppy disks on both bios. However, I had a problem reading 720KB floppy disks on HypeX (WD1770). I change the bios with a switch. Modified Bios and HyperX formats easily with 80 tracks. HyperX reads such disks with errors. I have a bios switch on the front of the floppy disk drive.

I had no trouble reading and writing the disks with what I assume to be the stock drive firmware (can't check now, since the device is half way to Belgium). It was only the formatter that produced a cosmetic complaint, but everything still worked. So I guess the Hyper-XF ROM gets rid of the warning, anyway.

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Does anyone have any documentation on the drive he is using?  I can find fairly cheap used drives on Ebay, but most do not have the flex ribbon cable attached and that seems to be the only connection to the drive itself.  So apparently it's carrying power and data.  It would help to have a pinout on the drive connector.

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2 hours ago, Dropcheck said:

Hi Lastic,

 

     Did Zaxon indicate how DF0 was set on the FD3238H drive? Can you ask him?  For some reason I can't register in the forum.

Good evening,

 

I communicated with Zaxon via the website where he sold his PCB sellmyretro.com .

 

https://www.sellmyretro.com/offer/details/37217

 

I will ask him for the info you requested.

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1 hour ago, Lastic said:

@Dropcheck

 

Zaxon replied me with the following :

 

Drive is intact, drive number is set by jumpers on my XF551 board. http://www.eightbitclone.com/xfwew.html

I think the question being asked was how was the floppy drive itself modified for "drive 0" operation -- not how the XF clone enumerates itself on the SIO bus (1-4).

 

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