Indus GT Floppy Drive to (Modern) PC

[chessplayerjames]

Hello all 8-bit Atari fans!

 

I have finally managed to allow my Atari (800XL) to communicate with a modern PC, using an Arduino, and three cables (input, output, and ground), and it seems to work just fine, between Atari and PC.  Using RespeQt, everything flows smoothly.  However, if I throw an Indus GT drive in the mix, things don't work so well.  I've tried an SIO chain, but the Indus GT drive goes kind of crazy (doesn't load anything, seems like it writes something...and the head moves around during boot).  I have also tried a backup program (Disk Wizard), and reading from the Indus GT drive, and then (at the prompt), disconnecting it, and connecting the wires for the Arduino, and then writing the sectors to a virtual disk...it worked the first time (the first 198 sectors), but for the second try after repeating the process, I got an error saying Bad Checksum (in RespeQt, it gave that error), and then on the TV screen, an error message, and that the backup process had aborted...

 

Is there a way I can overcome that error?  Or something else I should (could) try?  I would like to back up all of these old floppies, before any more bit rotting occurs...

 

Thank you for any and all help!

[TGB1718]

When you set the Input line on the Arduino did you use INPUT_PULLUP, that may help.

 

Or you might need to buffer with a 7407 using 2.2K pullups

[chessplayerjames]

I did try the INPUT_PULLUP code that you sent me.  Unfortunately, it didn't work.  However, now I manually hold the pins in the cable, so my transfers are now working well (slowly but surely).  After a few hours last night, I managed to transfer 10 (out of over 50) floppy disks.

[Kyle22]

You are using the /COMMAND line, right?

 

[_The Doctor__]

not only needs /command line but isolation diodes or chips...