PowerXL HD floppy not working - help please.

[Ral-Clan]

Hi,

Years ago I purchased (second hand) a Power XL internal High Density floppy drive for my A2000.  It looks like this:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v299/asm016/Amiga/Tower/18102009095.jpg

It is essentially a PC High Density floppy, with a circuit board stuck onto the end that makes it operate with an Amiga.

Although the original owner told me it was fully functional, I never got it to work in my A2000.

So, years later (today) I have decided I will finally do a full and thorough test to see exactly what is the problem.

I connected it to my bare, stock A2000 motherboard (with WB3.1 ROMs, ECS).

First I tried it with the original Sony made HD floppy drive Power Computing supplied attached to the A2000's internal floppy header. It activates and shows the "insert floppy screen", but when I insert a regular Double Density Workbench floppy the disc drive whirrs for a bit and its light goes on, but then the same "insert floppy" screen shows up again.  So it apparently can't read any discs.  I've tried many known working Amiga discs.

I attached a few other PC HD floppy drives by Panasonic to the Power Computing board and they do the same thing.

Then I attached a Mitsumi made PC HD floppy drive to the Power Computing board. Now it will accept the Workbench disc (or any other double density Amiga formatted disc) and will boot up - no problem.  I also tried a second Mitsumi floppy drive and it worked too.

Mounting PC0: also allows me to use it to read/write PC formatted 720K dics.

So apparently, this PowerXL board will allow Mitsumi PC drives to function as Amiga Double Density floppy drive no problem.

But - the Power XL was sold as a way to use PC HIGH DENSITY floppy drives with one's Amiga as an Amiga High Density drive.  I have never got this to work.

The Mitsumi drives will not recognize a HD floppy disc when inserted. It will only allow me to format it as a 880K Amiga disc or a PC 720K disc.

So, very strange. The board seems to be function, but will NOT fully function as a High Density drive.

Any ideas why it is not working?

Oh - yes, I the Power Computing patch that comes with the drive is installed and running.

[Ral-Clan]

Well...as a last resort I moved a jumper on the original Sony Floppy Drive that switched the floppy from "AT" to "AUTO" - whatever that meant.

Now it loads up and boots from Amiga Double Density disks just - just like the Mitsumi.

However, no luck with HD floppies.

It won't let me format HD floppies as HD floppes, only as 880K floppies.

When I install a HD PC formatted floppy into it I get the following warning message:

ERROR VALIDATING FILE ALLOCATION TABLE...PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK

....well...a little further than before I guess but no luck yet.

[amiga1260]

Did you use Highdensitypatch? This piece of software was supplied with the power Computing HD Floppy drive.

[Matt_H]

HighDensityPatch is required to be able to write to HD disks. What version do you have? I think 1.4 was the last one.

[Ral-Clan]

Yes, I'm using HighDensityPatch 1.4.  No luck with High Density disks though.

Is there any history with certain Amiga 2000 motherboard revisions not working with HD internal floppies?

I had an external HD floppy drive by another manufacturer which did work with this Amiga.

[Erol]

You may find this helpful.

http://eabmobile.abime.net/showthread.php?p=212195

[Erol]

and more info for cross dos if you intend to use for PC disks,  but my advise get it working with Amiga first.  then focus on PC0 after.

http://www.l8r.net/technical/t-crossdos.shtml

[Ral-Clan]

Thanks Erol,

I've actually already seen that link on EAB and am currently using the 1.4 version patch.
Thanks for the info on CrossDos. I've been using it for many years with double density disks.

I should mention to everyone that I now have gotten ALL the PC High-Density floppy drives to be recognized by the PowerXL board as Amiga double density drives.  Before some of the drives had not worked with this board (Panasonic, Toshiba).  I connected them as DF1 and they work now, but again, only as DD drives.

So, still having the problem with it not recognizing any drives as HD.
I don't have another Amiga to test the drive on, but can it possibly be the rev4.4 motherboard??  Strange, as my DELL external HD drive works with this motherboard.

[mongo]

Thanks Erol,

I've actually already seen that link on EAB and am currently using the 1.4 version patch.
Thanks for the info on CrossDos. I've been using it for many years with double density disks.

I should mention to everyone that I now have gotten ALL the PC High-Density floppy drives to be recognized by the PowerXL board as Amiga double density drives.  Before some of the drives had not worked with this board (Panasonic, Toshiba).  I connected them as DF1 and they work now, but again, only as DD drives.

So, still having the problem with it not recognizing any drives as HD.
I don't have another Amiga to test the drive on, but can it possibly be the rev4.4 motherboard??  Strange, as my DELL external HD drive works with this motherboard.

I'm not sure how the PowerXL HD floppy works, but to use a Commodore HD floppy drive in an A2000, you have to have the motherboard jumper for DF1 set to off, because the drive identification signal is provided by the drive. If you have it set to on, the motherboard provides this signal and the Amiga will always think that the disk in the drive is low density.

[Ral-Clan]

I'm not sure how the PowerXL HD floppy works, but to use a Commodore HD floppy drive in an A2000, you have to have the motherboard jumper for DF1 set to off, because the drive identification signal is provided by the drive. If you have it set to on, the motherboard provides this signal and the Amiga will always think that the disk in the drive is low density.

Okay, new development.

I am back to testing the PowerXL board with the original Sony drive it came with.  I have my Amiga DD drive set to DF0: and the PowerXL drive set to DF1:

As I said, when inserting a PC formatted HD disk I get the error message mentioned above.
When I try to format the HD disk, it now recognizes that there is a HD disk inside, as it the Format window says something like "Formatting PC1: to 1440 OKAY CANCEL?"

But when hitting okay, the computer Gurus.

It will not even allow me to try formatting the disk as a HD Amiga disk.  Only gives me the 880K option.

Talk about crazy hardware behavior!

[spirantho]

The PowerXL drive will have to do the same as the Chinon FB357A in an A4000 - it needs to run at 150rpm. How it does this I'm not sure - you may well find that the drive isn't an entirely normal PC drive, and is dual-speed like the afore-mentioned Chinon. That said, the controller chips must do something funky, and the HighDensityPatch is obviously necessary for something....

Basically be aware that the apparently normal drive in the XL drive may not be as normal as it seems!

[Erol]

No worries,  may be a stupid question but is the patch at the bottom of your user-startup sequence?

Also you must close J301 on A2000 (DF1 as HD Floppy Drive) and check the the floppy drive cable is installed correctly, seems obvious but check all the pin are not bent and you have no tears or kinks in the cable.

try this format tool, see what happens

http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/Formatter

[motrucker]

I used to have a couple of the Power XL drives, both external and internal. The external drives worked fine with my A1200 - but not my A2000. The internal I could get working IF it was DF0, and there were no second internal drive. I never did get that resolved. Sorry for such dark forecast.

[psxphill]

The PowerXL drive will have to do the same as the Chinon FB357A in an A4000 - it needs to run at 150rpm.

No it buffers the track and then shifts it back at half speed. Doing the opposite for writing needs the patch for some reason.
 
It probably wouldn't be too expensive to make something similar. I'm surprised jens hasn't done one.

[spirantho]

@psxphill
Thanks for that, I wasn't sure.

I should try my own PowerXL drive and see what happens when I try it with a different PC drive.

So does the interface convert from DISKCHG to RDY as well then?

Edit: don't forget to check if it needs a drive belt. Many Amiga drives are Citizen mechanisms like you find in the Sam Coupe, and if the belt's gone or bad it won't be turning the spindle properly.