Floppy Drives

[Dalamar]

Forgive the ignorance, but is there any reason a 1010 floppy drive would not work on an A3000D?  It works fine on my 4000, but the 3k it wont read disks on.

[Castellen]

The ports should be pin compatible.

Make sure there is power at the port first, +5V on pin 12 and +12V on pin 23.
If there is no power, check fuses F350 and F351 are not open circuit.

Make sure jumper J351 is set in the DF1: position, otherwise DF1 will not be not return a positive poll when the system powers up, so it will report there is no DF1.

[Dalamar]

All that you ask is true.  The drive powers up fine, but when a disk is put in it wont read.  The 3000 was a recent purchase and the internal drive is dead.  I'm trying to make do with the external but it's not working out.  Workbench (2.05) reports the disk drive as DF2 and the description of every disk I insert is NODOS.

[Castellen]

Sounds like something is causing the ready line to be pulled low when SEL2 is polled during power up, casuing the system to think there is a DF2.

Perhaps the faulty internal drive is causing these problems.  Or perhaps the there is a problem with the floppy controller, which is why neither of the two drives are working correctly.

If you haven't done so already, check Paula (U400) and it's socket for corrosion, as it's located right beside the leak prone RTC battery.

It's also worthwhile swapping the two CIAs over as one could have an I/O pin problem.  If the floppy starts working, but the parallel port or something now fails to work correctly, you'll know there is a CIA fault.


Reseat all the socketed ICs on the motherboard, as IC sockets are bad for developing intermittent problems which can cause strange things to happen.


Other than that, I can't think of any other reasons why the external drive won't work on the A3000.

[blobrana]

Hum,
That sounds like good advice to me...

The A3000 came with a dead A3010 (880kB) or an A3015 (1.76Mb) floppy disk?

Hum, I remember that the custom chips couldn't handle the data transfer rate from the HD disks (double rate). Commodore 'solved' this by making the drive spin at half normal speed when high density disks are used...
So...

Perhaps your A3000 has improperly-wired floppy cables.
(this was the case with the A4000s)

[The cables had wires 3-5 , instead of wires 4-6 twisted. These cables will work fine for a single drive, but will not properly connect a second drive...To use two drives that are both jumpered as DF0, the floppy cable should have both wires 4-6 and 10-12 twisted. A cable with only wires 4-6 twisted will require the drives to be jumpered as DF0 and DF1.]

Is it possible to try out a high-density drive ? (er, may ONLY work with HD floppys though)


Sry, don`t have too much expierience with the A3000, but it`s my 2 cents worth... :-?

[Dalamar]

Hmmm....  That is something that never occured to me.  The battery was leaking quite badly when I got the machine.  I've cleaned it up but there was a lot of corrosion.  Paula was close to the corrosion.  I'll take a harder look at it, thanks very much.

[Castellen]

I've repaired a few A3000s with floppy problems due to IC socket corrosion.
Remove U400 and U450 and carefully inspect each socket contact.  They should all be silver and shiny.

If there are any signs of green corrosion, then the socket needs to be replaced.

Normally I remove the socket and fit the IC directly into the PCB.  A far better soloution as there's no unreliable contacts to worry about ever again.

[Dalamar]

It's also worthwhile swapping the two CIAs over as one could have an I/O pin problem.  If the floppy starts working, but the parallel port or something now fails to work correctly, you'll know there is a CIA fault.

Not sure where they are on the 3000.  I'm also going to try to replace the floppy ribbon cable.  Do you know if they are the same as PC floppy cables?  I have many of those.

[NightShade737]

Yes up till the second connector. PC ones are -

Conn ---------- Conn ---><-- Conn

Where as Amiga cables are -

Conn ---------- Conn ------ Conn

(where the >< is a partial crossover) so unless you manually uncrossover it, you can't use the second connector.

[itix]

AFAIR A3000 can have two internal floppy drives (DF0 and DF1), thus external drives are DF2 and DF3.

[Dalamar]

Thanks for tha info.  :-)

[Kador]

Hello,

I have a problem with my A4k internal drive, a standard Chinon HD. I suspect the ribbon, but the drive may also be dead.

My questions are :
 - are you sure I can use a standard PC floppy ribbon as a replacement ?
 - what's the direction of the cable on the drive side (I dont see a "1" number anywhere
 - is it dangerous to plug the cable the wrong way ?
 - in case the drive is dead, where can I find replacement ones in europe (remember, HD drives !)

Thanx for any answer !

[PaSha]

Kador wrote:
Hello,

I have a problem with my A4k internal drive, a standard Chinon HD. I suspect the ribbon, but the drive may also be dead.

My questions are :
 - are you sure I can use a standard PC floppy ribbon as a replacement ?

Yes. Use the straight/untwisted part of the cable.
Amiga internal floppy cable:
DF0: No twists
DF1: pins 4-6 and 10-12 twisted (jumper drive as DS0)

 - what's the direction of the cable on the drive side (I dont see a "1" number anywhere

To the left, IIRC. The far end away from the power connector (chinon drives are opposite all other drives for some reason....).

 - is it dangerous to plug the cable the wrong way ?

Nah... shouldn't be. I've done it a couple of times with no harm done.

 - in case the drive is dead, where can I find replacement ones in europe (remember, HD drives !)

Thanx for any answer !

Try one of these dealers:
vesalia (www.vesalia.de)
kdh (www.kdh-datentechnik.com)
datakompaniet (www.datakompaniet.no)
ggsdata (www.ggsdata.se)
eyetech (www.eyetech.co.uk)

-Paul

[Kador]

Great anwers, I could not expect more !

Thanx a lot
 :-)  :-)  :-)

Edit : still, I hope it's not the drive, because this thing is sold at insane prices !!!!

[sir_inferno]

Kador wrote:

Edit : still, I hope it's not the drive, because this thing is sold at insane prices !!!!

yep, because the amiga community is so small  :-(

btw, welcome to amiga.org  :-D