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1050 and XF551 both fail very similar


800_Rocks

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I received and cleaned-up a 1050 and XF551 today. Blew out the dust bunnies, lubricated the rails, cleaned the drive heads, gave the cases a bath, etc. Using a known good power supply and SIO cable I went to testing these one at a time.  I could not get either one to boot from a DOS disk so I switched to a cartridge based DOS. I could not get either to read a disk so I tried to format a disk. Both drives set off to format, I hear the head stepping, I hear a write or two, long seek, more stepping, then both throw an error 144  ‘Device Done Error’  the bits of the error description that may apply are:  ‘unable to read or write the requested sector’  OR caused ‘by variations in drive motor speed’   
It seems so odd to me that both drives have such similar issues. Both were in their original foam and boxes but had likely been stored in hot and likely damp locations.  Thanks in advance for troubleshooting advice and order of things to try. 520831CD-A7FC-4597-875D-2B34B49FC1A4.thumb.jpeg.acb17aa3186e13194f3681abdc0ddbb4.jpeg

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You can only have one device assigned as drive one and powered up on the sio chain at a time...

also make sure any homebrew device have proper id and signal isolation. I'd use a known good bootable disk and try using each drive all by themselves with nothing else attached and nothing that emulates or affects SIO selected.

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different sio cords?

with only the drives and not a mod,cart,sdrive, nadah...

tried another computer?

clean the heads again, maybe try another disk that is a known good purchased bought game... I've seen folks use disks that were written by one of their own 'good' drives that are out of alignment and not 'good' at all.

Edited by _The Doctor__
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10 hours ago, 800_Rocks said:

more stepping, then both throw an error 144  ‘Device Done Error’  the bits of the error description that may apply are:  ‘unable to read or write the requested sector’  OR caused ‘by variations in drive motor speed’   
It seems so odd to me that both drives have such similar issues. Both were in their original foam and boxes but had likely been stored in hot and likely damp locations.  Thanks in advance for troubleshooting advice and order of things to try.

 

Error #144 can also be a write-protected disk (XF551) or if the 1050 has a cloned Happy with one of the millions of not-100%-working patched firmwares. Be sure that your DOS from cart doesn´t include highspeed SIO routines, especially the XF551 is very different with that and makes a lot trouble. Later I suggest to change to Hyper-XF to get a real working XF551. BTW... you´re in the U.S.? Be sure that this XF551 has an NTSC firmware. The 1050 hasn´t different firmware, but the XF551 do. As long you´re using no highspeed SIO, it works also with the "wrong" firmware.

 

But, my 1st thoughts are to the disks used. Even when the old 5.25 are very stable over the time, mostly they can READ - but not formatted or written. So if you´ve tested 20 and more disks of a different kind, I would look for technical errors, but if you´ve only tested with 1-3 disks or so... that´s no real test ?

 

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2 hours ago, flashjazzcat said:

Are the drives and computer all NTSC or PAL?

How do I tell?  They all came from the original owner who is in the U.S.   I'm using my own 800xl which must be NTSC as it works on SVGA on my TV and works on my 1702 monitor.  How do I tell if a 1050 or XF551 are NTSC vs. PAL?

 

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Once you verify that your diskettes are OK, you will need known, good drives (or parts) so you can swap parts. Start with the drives themselves and be ever so careful that you do not cause a different failure to add to what you already have.

 

It sounds like your drives 'mostly work', but without good spares you are at a serious disadvantage.

 

Bob

 

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3 hours ago, kheller2 said:

Let's go back to basics... do you have a known working single density bootable disk?

Let's focus on the 1050 and booting.

New/Additional testing performed on the suspect bad 1050

 

1) I switched the test computer from an 800XL to a 130XE,

2) I pulled-out a known working 1050.  I booted DOS 2.5 on it.  I formatted a diskette and wrote the DOS 2.5 files to it then booted from it.  So I have a known good DOS 2.5 diskette.

3) Switched to the suspect bad 1050 using the same SIO cable and power supply that was just used with the working 1050 (step 2).  There are no other devices on the SIO chain.  Only the 130XE connected to the suspected bad 1050.  The 1050 drive ID is '1'

4) power off the 130xe, power on the 1050, I hear the normal motor noise and quick seek back and forth (seems normal).  Insert new, known good DOS 2.5 diskette and power on the 130xe

5) the busy light on the 1050 lights-up.  I hear one 'beep' every 10 seconds or so and I get 'BOOT ERROR' on the screen.  What is odd though is it takes a full 10 seconds between 'BOOT ERROR' messages.  Don't these usually happen in rapid fire instead of 1 every 10 seconds?

 

Next I inserted a cartridge based DOS 4.53  When I try to display the contents of the DOS 2.5 diskette in the suspect bad 1050 there is a small amount of activity then after about 10 seconds I get 'Error 163' 'Unrecoverable System I/O Error'

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The slow BOOT is because its actually trying to read data and waiting for the drive (so XE <->1050 comms are good).  The fast boot error happens when one of the comm chips is shot, or you leave the drive door open).

 

So... sounds like we have a read issue right now.  

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Have you opened the 1050 yet? You should check for loose connectors, missing ICs and things like that. You need to be confident that nobody has been 'fixing' before you.

 

Nice to see that you have a good spare. Start with the drive itself... carefully. Mount the suspect drive in your good 1050 and see what happens. You might want to mount your good drive in the broken 1050, but you risk the bad 1050 zapping your good drive. (just good practice...)

 

Bob

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12 hours ago, flashjazzcat said:

That's a good question, although Jurgen reminds us that this is only worth worrying about with the XF (although there are others; my Rana2000 won't work with PAL Ataris).

 

I ran a US-model 1050 on 240VAC at 50Hz for years (including with either a Happy or US Doubler mod; can't remember which one) with just a PSU swap.  Worked fine.  If there were issues that could have been attributed to the differences between 50Hz and 60Hz, I can't say for certain that I ever ran into them.

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7 hours ago, flashjazzcat said:

So it should, since the 1050 is TV standard agnostic, unlike the XF.

 

Not quite sure I understand - neither one should care about PAL vs. NTSC since they're not display devices.  Having said that, I've run into stuff in the past where 50Hz vs 60Hz (or vice-versa) is an issue, particularly for anything that draws its timing from the mains frequency.  Never having owned an XF551 before, however, I have absolutely no idea if they're affected by that or not.

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25 minutes ago, x=usr(1536) said:

Not quite sure I understand - neither one should care about PAL vs. NTSC

See tf_hh's comment earlier in the thread. The entire system runs at a slightly different clock speed depending on whether the machine is NTSC or PAL, and VBLANK runs at a different frequency. The peripheral has to sync with the host machine; 1050s of either standard are apparently able to do so, but the XF551 cannot and has to have the drive firmware matched to the host.

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5 hours ago, flashjazzcat said:

See tf_hh's comment earlier in the thread. The entire system runs at a slightly different clock speed depending on whether the machine is NTSC or PAL, and VBLANK runs at a different frequency. The peripheral has to sync with the host machine; 1050s of either standard are apparently able to do so, but the XF551 cannot and has to have the drive firmware matched to the host.

 

Oh, right.  Not sure how I managed to completely confuse the TV systems in a display sense with the machine's region.  I'll call that my caffeine-then-post moment for today ;)

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