KCS Dual HD floppy drive

[curtis]

Does anyone have experience with this unit?

I've got one, but can only get it to format floppies up to the extended double density.

Anytime I try to format a HD diskette in ANY format it gives me a "Bad Disk" error.

I did pop it open and noticed it used NEC FD 1138H drives.  I'm thinking the "H" signifies half speed.  Anyone know whether that's right?

Curtis

[curtis]

Sorry, forgot to mention I have the driver software.

Still doesn't work.

Not sure if it will affect things, but I'm running an A500 with 10MB RAM (8 fast, 2 chip) with no accelerator.

[curtis]

I already have the manual and it's the same as what's at the link.

Plus, it's in Dutch and that's one language I have zero experience with!

http://amiga-manuals.xiik.net under hardware there is a manual if that helps

[curtis]

That was a little bit helpful as I wasn't sure about the switch.  Did figure out by trial and error it HAS to be in the middle position on boot up.

Danged thing whiles like a son of a gun if it's not!

Found this, should be useful I would think.

http://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=773

[curtis]

I'm really thinking the drives are out of whack as like I said, they work okay in double density mode, but absolutely NOT in high density mode.

Should I be able to swap out the drives for a couple of standard 1.44 PC drives?  Or should I be looking for Amiga HD drives?

[curtis]

I do have several, however, they're not matched like these are.

Wonder if that'll affect things...

[curtis]

Well, I've identified 3 drives in my inventory that work, sort of.

I can format DD (880K or 960K) all day long.

However, when I try HD, I get the ever-not-so-popular "Bad Disk" error.

I had forgotten I have 2 copies of the driver disk and was able to use the 1.5 to get the DD formats working.

Other than that, no joy.

I noticed the old drives have a single jumper set.  I had assumed it was to lock the drives into drive 0, but now I'm wondering if it might affect the HD format.  A search online for NEC FD 1138H doesn't turn up much.

All the drives I have do not have any jumpers, so now I'm sort of at a loss unless someone has any suggestions.

Curtis

[curtis]

Thanks Lianna.

However, I had doped out most of that already from other posts and experimentation.

I was actually feeding the manual through Babel Fish for a while, but it got rather tedious to say the least!

I'm not going to translate all of the manual for you, far too much text!

First of all they say the switch can be toggled while the Amiga is on, but changing it probably won't take effect until a reboot.

Upper position: needs no driver, but you only get DD floppy support.

Middle position: you need to load the driver after booting. It says it won't recognize the drive without that driver. It also says it offers additional functionality, after that's been enabled in the software. This offers features such as 960K disks, or compressed disks. You need to use the KCS floppy drive to be able to read these, of course.

Bottom position: this is the diskcopy mode, and the driver won't work (you can't use it as a floppy drive like that). You use the BLITZ! (DF0: to DF2:), CYCLONE (DF0: to DF1:), SIEGFRIED COPY (DF0: to DF1:), or SYNCHRO EXPRESS (DF0: to DF1:) software to copy disks with this mode. They state that the other floppy drive must be empty while doing this. And you can also copy with the switch in the middle position with CYCLONE V, but it won't verify. AMI can be used to copy when booted with the switch in the bottom position, after then switching it to the upper position.

Also, none of these programs can copy a HD floppy.

Hope this is of some use.

[curtis]

Last comment on this item as I've decided to send it over to ebay.

1.  Compressed mode works!  So, DD compressed yields around 1.8K!  Kind of weird that works given it's almost the same capacity of the HD.  Oh well.

2.  After uninstalling it, ended up re-installing 3.1 because the driver disk overwrote the original format command!  Quite annoying.

So, summary of what I've found out of this little beauty.

After installation of new drives, both drives work as listed below.
HD does NOT work.
DD works perfectly, both 880K and 960K.
PC mode works in DD mode.  HD no.
DD compressed works!

Copy mode has not been tested.

Makes me wonder if the controller inside the case is losing its mind...

Still, a dual drive in a single case is rather handy at times.