US Doubler Issues : Just some Advice please?

[Nermal]

Hi I've been trying some of my old 5-1/4 floppies.   Most of them are Alphas.

 

Both 810 and 1050 have no difficulties reading SD disks and run perfectly so I don't think its the felt pads.

 

When I try an alpha load DD it either keeps Boot erroring or loads up the media very slowly.

 

I've added a link with video,   any ideas gratefully received.   

 

I think maybe the media has degraded over time,   I don't think it was specified to be in use thirty years later  

 

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AkwzwvRKBoyjlKhl-xelEjRLlTpN4A?e=6OcXzn

 

Many Thanks

[Beeblebrox]

@Nermal have you cleaned the read heads on both? Disposits from these old disks deposit quicker on them and can cause read failures/boot errors and related issues.

 

Also make sure when you plug and unplug the sio cables and also the power that the drive is powered off at all times. Damage can occur to chips on the drive's pcb on a 1050 if on. 

[Nermal]

1 minute ago, Beeblebrox said:

@Nermal have you cleaned the read heads on both? Disposits from these old disks deposit quicker on them and can cause read failures/boot errors and related issues.

 

Also make sure when you plug and unplug the sio cables and also the power that the drive is powered off at all times. Damage can occur to chips on the drive's pcb on a 1050 if on. 

Hi,   I'll have another go at cleaning the 1050s head, Last time I used a very tiny bit of isopropanol alcohol on a cotton bud and then dried it off with the other side.   I'll be careful with the SIO thanks for that.   Wish me luck  

[+Larry]

What is an alpha?  Is it a brand of diskette?  I always had spotty success with 1050 DD disks, and like you, rock solid r/w in SD. 

[_The Doctor__]

boot loader disk...

[+CharlieChaplin]

Strange,

 

afaik the 810 cannot read DD (180k) at all, unless it has some enhancement. But maybe what you call DD is just enhanced/1050/dual density (130k), which the 810 also cannot read (810 uses FM, single density only; 130k is MFM).

 

The 1050 with USD should be able to read both 130k and 180k, since it is reading very slow, I guess a special sector interleave (for USD) was used with the disks. I do not own a USD, but I had several Turbo 1050 drives, there you had to boot or load a (Turbo) driver first, to read+write+format the disks with this sector interleave format very fast. Without this driver, the drive would read/write the sector interleaved disks very slowly. Maybe with USD it is the same and you have to load some driver first, to go full speed?

 

Could also be that the 288 RPM is not correctly calibrated (afaik 286-290 is allowed, I always use 287.5 RPM). Other than that, I have no idea whats wrong.

 

[TGB1718]

6 hours ago, CharlieChaplin said:

Maybe with USD it is the same and you have to load some driver first, to go full speed?

 

You are right, if the disk is just a normal DD disk, it reads slowly (although still quicker as it's reading 256 bytes/sector),

the interleave is also needed to run at full speed with a high speed DOS installed, like SpartaDOS.

 

bitd, I wrote a high speed SIO loader that allowed me to "patch" other DOS's and run them at high speed too.

[Nermal]

11 hours ago, Larry said:

What is an alpha?  Is it a brand of diskette?  I always had spotty success with 1050 DD disks, and like you, rock solid r/w in SD. 

Hi I think its just a name for some warp / ultra speed multiboots.   I've attached some of the loader screens that are Alpha.

 

[Nermal]

15 hours ago, Beeblebrox said:

@Nermal have you cleaned the read heads on both? Disposits from these old disks deposit quicker on them and can cause read failures/boot errors and related issues.

 

Also make sure when you plug and unplug the sio cables and also the power that the drive is powered off at all times. Damage can occur to chips on the drive's pcb on a 1050 if on. 

Thanks Beeblebrox, it seems to be a bit happier its not seeking quite as much. I think my media may be toooo olllldddd like me   

[Mclaneinc]

 

The number of us that have had to throw out our old floppies, sometimes the way we have to store them isn't ideal, bit rot sets in..

[+kheller2]

The 1050 Struggle videos are not right.  That is too slow even for a DD bad sector skew... something else is wrong, I swear I saw the head restep too try to read a sector.

 

I'm also curious why the 810 SD sounds faster than the 1050 SD.

 

 

[Nermal]

11 hours ago, kheller2 said:

The 1050 Struggle videos are not right.  That is too slow even for a DD bad sector skew... something else is wrong, I swear I saw the head restep too try to read a sector.

 

I'm also curious why the 810 SD sounds faster than the 1050 SD.

 

 

Hi River Patroller, yes It re-steps and tries to re-read, it will eventually picks them up and continues but it's takes it ages.   

 

The 810 has a Happy upgrade so it does read faster, I can use Side3 to load the Happy Software and make it unhappy .   

 

The 1050 reads SD perfectly, just DD it won't.   And the 810 can only cope with SD, so that was mainly for backups (ahem).

 

My media has not been kept in the best of places, its lived most of its life in a cardboard box in the bottom of a wardrobe, its only recently that I dived back in to the world of A8.   

 

Hence all the old hardware.

 

Thankyou

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 21, 2022 by Nermal

[+Larry]

Do you have any disks in ED?  It would be interesting to know how your 1050 does with old MFM ED disks.  In my own situation, I found that the XF551 did DD great, and when converted to 3.5" 720k, it was even better.  But I wouldn't discount the improvements in diskette mfg. during those years, either. 

 

Likewise, how about recently made DD disks -- how do those do?  And last, were the problematic disks formatted/written on the same drive?

[Nermal]

3 hours ago, Larry said:

Do you have any disks in ED?  It would be interesting to know how your 1050 does with old MFM ED disks.  In my own situation, I found that the XF551 did DD great, and when converted to 3.5" 720k, it was even better.  But I wouldn't discount the improvements in diskette mfg. during those years, either. 

 

Likewise, how about recently made DD disks -- how do those do?  And last, were the problematic disks formatted/written on the same drive?

Ok I've had a go, and its being weird again, 1050 will format SD but I get an error if I format to 1050 mid density or Double density in Sparta Dos X. But As I now have an APT partition (Thanks to FlashJazzCats SIDE3 youtube tutorial and the guy i bought the 600XL off) I can format it to SD skewed and it absolutely flies when loading and saving.   I think its probably a media or drive thing. The media must be 30 years old now.  I must say that I've never seen a XF551 in real life they look cool.  

 

All my media is about the same vintage, and I dont even want to think how expensive 5 1/4" disks are now, or if anybody even makes them.

Edited May 21, 2022 by Nermal

[E474]

It sounds like your disks are slowly failing, you should try and copy them off to ATR images while they are still readable.

[Nermal]

1 hour ago, E474 said:

It sounds like your disks are slowly failing, you should try and copy them off to ATR images while they are still readable.

Yes that's what I thought.   Thx for the help All

[+kheller2]

11 hours ago, Nermal said:

Ok I've had a go, and its being weird again, 1050 will format SD but I get an error if I format to 1050 mid density or Double density in Sparta Dos X. But As I now have an APT partition (Thanks to FlashJazzCats SIDE3 youtube tutorial and the guy i bought the 600XL off) I can format it to SD skewed and it absolutely flies when loading and saving.   I think its probably a media or drive thing. The media must be 30 years old now.  I must say that I've never seen a XF551 in real life they look cool.  

 

All my media is about the same vintage, and I dont even want to think how expensive 5 1/4" disks are now, or if anybody even makes them.

Are you sure the disks are capable of DD?  Lots of people used SD disks for shoddy DD purposes. The fact you can’t format ED is a problem.  There are some threads here were SD works fine but DD doesn’t and fixes for that.  Assuming you have good media and clean heads. ?

[cwilbar]

17 hours ago, Nermal said:

Hi River Patroller, yes It re-steps and tries to re-read, it will eventually picks them up and continues but it's takes it ages.   

 

The 810 has a Happy upgrade so it does read faster, I can use Side3 to load the Happy Software and make it unhappy .   

 

The 1050 reads SD perfectly, just DD it won't.   And the 810 can only cope with SD, so that was mainly for backups (ahem).

 

My media has not been kept in the best of places, its lived most of its life in a cardboard box in the bottom of a wardrobe, its only recently that I dived back in to the world of A8.   

 

Hence all the old hardware.

 

Thankyou

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Have you ever changed the FDC chip in the drive ?  As I understand it, there are some adjustements that are made when an FDC is put in.  From what I've read at SD it isn't very picky and will often work w/o adjustment, but at DD, it gets more finicky, and needs to be properly adjusted.  There is a procedure for doing that posted here in the forums.

 

Not saying this is it, but it is something to consider and may be worth readjusting regardless if the FDC chip has been changed or not ?