Hope my A3000 floppy isn't damaged 8(

[Amiduffer]

A couple of weeks ago, a fellow was advertising a Chinnon HD floppy drive as part of a company liquidation and gave it for a buck.

I tried installing it last night, and I think it damaged something in the process.

The first time I hooked it up, upon booting, the floppy drive light stayed on constantly, without the wheel turning. The effect on WB, was that upon booting, the busy pointer appears, and besides moving the screen up and down, I can't do anything. Can't open any drawers, menu's don't work, etc.

Then I daisy chained my original floppy to the HD floppy, taking care to move the jumper from NODF1 to DF1, and the effect was the same, constant FD light on both drives, no WB activity.

I then moved a jumper on the HD floppy, and the light doesn't light, but nothing happened, the WB still was locked out. In the process of trying different combinations, something happened, where there was loud grinding sound from my two external floppy drives for second, and the clicking noise became a slightly bit louder.

I gave up at that point, and put the original floppy back, but now, the situation is, that the floppy drive light stays on constantly and the busy pointer effectively locks my WB up. I have to do the two mouse buttons before booting and choose boot from HD, and WB starts normally, although without the floppy, there are a few complications.

Did I damage a chip hooking up this HD floppy?

The external floppys are ok, I tried them on my A1200, and they work fine. But connected to the A3000, the clicking is slightly louder than normal.

[Amiduffer]

Ok, thanks.

I'd hate to think of taking my trusty 'ol original 1010 apart.  :-D

[Amiduffer]

As a general rule, which side should the red trace on the floppy cable be on, when connected to a drive?

[Amiduffer]

Tomas wrote:
@amiduffer
One silly question.. Did you put the ide cable on the right way? If you put it wrong way, then you experience this exact symptom you described.

Hard to tell sometimes with that forest of wires.

One good thing came out of this. I took my A1200 out of the closet, installed the 3.1 roms that were just sitting in the desk, took the 1992 80meg HD out and replaced it with a 1.2 gig, found out my WB install disks have errors, and learned how to use Diskmaster & SquirrelScsi setup disk to prep a HD.

[Amiduffer]

Great, I'll check that tonight! Thanks for all the great help.

@ rkauer. Your avatar is hilarious!   :lol:

[Amiduffer]

Ah! The culprit was slightly bent pins, pin 1 and the one above it, so that there was no contact. Once I straightened them out, everything was normal. First I put the HD floppy in alone, A3000 boots normally. Then daisy chained the original DD floppy to the HD floppy, and the 3000 boots normally.

Then, I tried formating some disks in the HD drive. If I put a HD floppy in, two icons appear. Choosing format from the menu from DF1 let me format in 880k, choosing format from MS1 let me format in 770k. But, once you did format, it only ran for 3 seconds before quiting. An error message came up saying that it couldn't initialize.

Where in WB, do you allow it to format at 1.4m? Is that something in the tooltypes? Why would it quit after you start formating?

Although CLS2086 has some good advice. I think my DF0 drive could use some maintenance. Half the time it works poorly.

[Amiduffer]

It seems that this floppy drive was made for installation in A2000's. Is there a jumper on that model you have to set on the motherboard so that it'll format at 1.4m instead of 720k? Or is that just a software thing?

[Amiduffer]

CLS2086 wrote:
What are the references on the drive ?

None. There's only this on the back.

Rev B model FB-357
serial no. 10207925
Chinon ind, inc. Made in Japan