1050 drive issue

[1050]

AC not DC on the power supply?

 

TP15 is ground so that measurement is fine

 

TP14 would be more interesting, my guess is way less

than 12 volts since something is loading down the

power supply. It smells like a blown capacitor shorting

the 12 volt supply to ground. There are several but one

of them should exhibit signs of undue heat, be careful

with the fingers.

 

Voltage going into the voltage regulators is also

important, should be 7 for 5 volt side and up to 22

volts DC for 12 volt side.

[Keneg]

Ok, thanks for the info. I will try to do some more checks tomorrow. While I haven’t looked closely, I haven’t noticed anything that looks burnt. I will use a light and look closer.

[Keneg]

The drive I have been working on is a World Storage. I don’t see any obviously bad caps. I am thinking I should start with the large electrolytics? I also just got a Tandon 1050 with even worse symptoms. It doesn’t do anything except light the power light when turned on. The voltages I checked were very low or nothing at all. The head wouldn’t move at all, but some sewing machine oil on the shaft of the stepper motor and moving it back and forth seems to have freed it up. The electrolytics on the Tandon are 2x6800uF 35 volt and one 4700uF 25 volt 85C. The World Storage has 3x4700uF 35 volt electrolytics. So, is this a good place to start?

[Keneg]

While trying to read voltages on the Tandon drive smoke started rolling. Not sure if my probe shorted something or the component just finally failed. I was trying to read voltage at Q6 and may have contacted TP12. Tonight I took it apart and found C21 burnt to a crisp. It is a 4.7μF 16 V capacitor according to the schematic. The strange thing is that when I tried the drive once everything cooled down, the head tried to move. It had never budged before. There is a 100μH inductor next to it that is discolored, but I think that is just from the capacitor. So should I just buy another capacitor, change, and try it or should I do more checking first?

[_The Doctor__]

you have to fix what got cooked before you have enough smoke to make things work enough to chase down the original issues...

[1050]

So, is this a good place to start?

Not really. Best practices are to remove both voltage

regulators entirely and measure the voltages being

presented to them first. This cuts the power supply

in half, supply and load. If you have a supply side

problem you'll know it by voltages outside the norm.

You can't fix the load side until the supply is good

anyway. Picking random stuff to check will have you

behind the 8 ball all day. After supply voltages

check fine then measure lifted output pin on voltage

regulators reinserted to insure they are limiting

the supply voltage properly to their respective

ratings. And this only checks the voltage regulator

function which is also paramount. If excessive

current draw drags this voltage down then you still

have another defective component on the load side

that hopefully will release some of that magic smoke

they talk about and show you the bad card in the deck.

 

You can pull C21 and continue looking for 12 volt

positive, but I suspect you will have it as soon as

you pull C21. It smoked itself open it would appear

but it certainly needs to be removed. Leaving it

in the circuit is sort of like trusting kids with

cherry bombs, somehow they go off eventually.

 

But yes get C21 on the way, the circuit will probably

function well enough without it in the meantime.

 

Not required but using these will cut down on heat

generated. Just something to consider.

swtiching 7805 7812 voltage regulator

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/268721-ac-output/?do=findComment&comment=3824750

 

Just a random recollection here, does Q6 have an insulating

sheet of mica under it between the heat sink tab and the

heat sink proper? Because it should have one. If it doesn't

then the 12 volt power will be shorted to ground and this

one might sink enough heat that it never lets the

smoke go. The 220 case style has the heat sink tab

connected to one of the legs almost always. In the

voltage regulators that is pin 2 or ground so it doesn't

need isolation. Q6 also has the center leg connected to

the mounting tab but here that is the collector and it's

supposed to be +12 volts.

[Keneg]

@1050 ... thanks for the advice. I did cut one leg of C21, but havent turned it on since. One thing I noticed is that the connector to the stepper motor is plugged in backwards to the rest. It is J13 I think. I can see the numbers of the other 3 and they line up. That one sticks out and I think the number is towards the heat sink.

Edited August 16, 2018 by Keneg

[+kheller2]

@1050 ... thanks for the advice. I did cut one leg of C21, but havent turned it on since. One thing I noticed is that the connector to the stepper motor is plugged in backwards to the rest. It is J13 I think. I can see the numbers of the other 3 and they line up. That one sticks out and I think the number is towards the heat sink.

Tandon and WST mechs have different facing plugs for the mechs.

[xrbrevin]

i wonder if you have found a possible fault due to the head now moving?

i know for tandon mechs you can test the ohm ratings of the stepper motor windings as per various 1050 the service manuals - maybe the WS mech uses the same motor? worth a check anyways

[Keneg]

I didn’t have time to test the drive last night after clipping one leg of C21. Tonight I hooked back up the drive mechanism and turned it on. The head moved normally. I turned it off and moved it to one extreme or the other and turned it back on a couple of times. It always moved to the correct position. At this point I am getting somewhat excited. Next I inserted a blank diskette. The activity light came on and the disk spun! WOW! So then I boote my 130XE to DOS2.5 and switched to this drive. I formatted The disk, transferred DOS files, and was then able to boot from it. I then switched back to my other 1050 and was able to,boot off the same disk. So, once I receive and install a replacement C21, it is fixed. I am considering ordering and installing a Happy adapter for it.

 

Thanks to all who helped here. Once I have this one finished, I will have to tackle the World Storage drive again.

[Keneg]

Replaced C21 tonight and the drive still works. Next will be to install the Happy 1050. I want to see how much faster it will be.

[xrbrevin]

youll appreciate the track-buffered writes of the happy mod

[Keneg]

I installed it tonight. Ran the Happy diagnostics disk and tested good. Yes, I can tell it’s much faster. Now how do I use the true double density mode, especially format a double density disk?

[+kheller2]

I installed it tonight. Ran the Happy diagnostics disk and tested good. Yes, I can tell it’s much faster. Now how do I use the true double density mode, especially format a double density disk?

 

Use a true double density compatible DOS?

say.. MYDOS or SPARTA or...

[Keneg]

OK, I thought I tried MyDOS. I will look at it again.

[1050]

With MyDOS you'll first have to configure it as DD

if it already isn't. Second line of the screen display

shows you what it is set up as unless it's 4.53/4 MyDOS

where there are issues with this very thingy.

 

Drive number will be followed by either S- or D- or

in Beta 4 with E- for Single, Double, or Enhanced

density. I'll assume it says 2S- for example. The

single hyphen indicates single sided, unfortunately

this is not automatic, wonky in 4.53/4 and must be

set by (O. Change Config. which is commonly lost as

well.

 

 

Select (P. Set Density

you'll be asked

Drive, new density:

enter 2,D for double density.

you'll get a new screen showing now 2D- instead of

2S- as before. But only if the drive accepts it's

new assignment. A stock 1050 will refuse this

change.

 

Proceed to (I. Initialize Disk as per usual.

[Keneg]

I’m not sure which version of MyDOS I have. When I typed P and then 1,D I got 1H on the top of the screen. Formatting a new disk gave me 0568 sectors. Very strange. If the sectors are 256 bytes, that would be 142k. I used the Happy disk to copy a 180k disk from my SIO2PC-USB. That seemed to work. There was something about adding a file to a DOS 2.5 disk and naming it autoexec.???. I will have to read more and experiment with it.

[+Nezgar]

Before I was 'enlightened' by SpartaDOS X, I was a fan of TOP-DOS, it has some of the configurability options of MyDOS. Also, Smart-DOS might be a simpler jump for someone familiar with a DOS 2.0 type environment. But SpartaDOS with the UltraSpeed SIO driver really makes the Happy fly (3x faster SIO transfer rate). I can't remember if TOP-DOS had an UltraSpeed driver... But much less complicated to format a DD disk than with MyDOS.

 

You probably noticed that the Happy software sector copier can read/write to the happy drive very fast, but I think that utlilty still reads/writes from an SIO2PC at standard speed.

 

UltraSpeed disk copying from SIO2PC based disk to a physical disk also with UltraSpeed can be done with various Sector Copiers, my favourite is MyCopyR. Check this post for downloads of sector copiers, including MyCopyR

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/279557-how-do-i-make-a-copy-of-a-non-dos-floppy-image/?p=4044532

[1050]

Press Return for a new screen with first line showing

version. Bone stock will say 4.50 and it goes up

from there.

 

Might be the funky 4.53/4 that would do 1H from that

attempt, but it's not right. H in MyDOS is there

for the corvus hard drive only and now you in some

kind of cross wind in the space/time continuum.

 

I have had some success using H drives for 16 meg

ATR files back in the day when that was just not done

or thought about very much. It did work but I had

little use of it.

 

At any rate, your results show that it did not work

properly. Why, I can't know until a version is discovered.

And if it's found to say 4.53 or 4.54 we are done.

Sorry about that. Those versions work fine until you

try something just one off from normal and then you

have a basket case. Which also applies to all MyDOS

but in all other cases there might be fix or workaround.

 

I never recommend 4.53/4 for this very reason, no source

exists for it that produces the distributed version.

So it can't be fixed period.

 

MDB4_2ND.ZIP MyDOS 4.55 beta 4 is the one I'll recommend

get it here

http://www.mathyvannisselroy.nl/mydos.htm

 

(Psst--I'm slightly biased as I'm also the doctor

for that version)

[_The Doctor__]

I have no idea what goes on with MyDOS, I used it back in the day without much issue, and with the ATR8000/mio/bb etc. But lately I don't know what to use, with an old myide it did weird things, high speed every other drive was an issue but maybe it got fixed.... I don't remember.

 

Can you please lay out which is the best and why in descending order? Is the communication / sio timing tailored more for pal or ntsc these days?

Edited August 29, 2018 by _The Doctor__

[Keneg]

I used SpartaDOS 3.2G last night to verify that double density works, but I don’t think it is compatible with DOS 2.X. I found a list of Atari DOSes that gives a few comments on each. It would be nice to have a list of them that work well with the Happy enhancement and are DOS 2.X compatible. Is MyDOS 4.55 compatible? How important is compatibility?

[+kheller2]

I used SpartaDOS 3.2G last night to verify that double density works, but I don’t think it is compatible with DOS 2.X. I found a list of Atari DOSes that gives a few comments on each. It would be nice to have a list of them that work well with the Happy enhancement and are DOS 2.X compatible. Is MyDOS 4.55 compatible? How important is compatibility?

 

I'm probably not the person to make a comment like this but... DOS 2.x is not DoubleDensity compatible period [Edit: Updated, see later posts] (I'm not talking about 2.0d). So are you looking for something that can read 2.x disks and copy files to another DOS FileSystem that is in DD or a simple menu DOS akin to 2.x?

 

DOS 4.x and XE come to mind but I would not recommend them at all.

[Keneg]

I'm probably not the person to make a comment like this but... DOS 2.x is not DoubleDensity compatible period (I'm not talking about 2.0d). So are you looking for something that can read 2.x disks and copy files to another DOS FileSystem that is in DD or a simple menu DOS akin to 2.x?

 

DOS 4.x and XE come to mind but I would not recommend them at all.

 

I believe there are some later versions of DOS 2.X that added DD support. 2.6 and 2.8. Also there is HappyDOS, but imdon’t See much about it, so I assume there are reasons it isn’t used much.

[+kheller2]

I believe there are some later versions of DOS 2.X that added DD support. 2.6 and 2.8. Also there is HappyDOS, but imdon’t See much about it, so I assume there are reasons it isn’t used much.

 

I'm not in front of one of those DOSes at the moment, but I thought they were all based on DOS 2.0s with a modified DUP. Some support ED, but not DD.

Try DOS XL 2.3p or later for that retro Atari feel.

 

http://www.atarimania.com/faq-atari-400-800-xl-xe-what-other-3rd-party-dos-versions-were-released-for-the-atari_85.html

[+Nezgar]

I used SpartaDOS 3.2G last night to verify that double density works, but I don’t think it is compatible with DOS 2.X. I found a list of Atari DOSes that gives a few comments on each. It would be nice to have a list of them that work well with the Happy enhancement and are DOS 2.X compatible. Is MyDOS 4.55 compatible? How important is compatibility?

 

SpartaDOS 3.2G is definitely compatible with Atari DOS 2 disks. It can read/write files on SD/DD disks that are already formatted.

 

The utility XINIT.COM will format new disks in various densities including Single Sided Double Density, but will lay down a SpartaDOS directory structure. To format an a disk with an AtariDOS directory structure with SpartaDOS 3.2, use the AINIT.COM utility.

 

Notes about these 2 commands are also in the SDCS Manual: http://www.atarimania.com/documents/atari-8bit-spartados-construction-set-owners-manual.pdf

 

And just to muddy things here for fun... technically DOS 2.0S is capable of running on DD disks I remember Bob wooley posted a while back about formatting a DD AtariDos 2.0 disk with SpartaDOS, then boot DOS 2.0S, change to and read a directory or something on the DD disk, then and format & write DOS files to the disk. Result is a bootable DD disk with DOS 2.0S on it but of course it's missing the density change menu option most DD modified versions of DOS 2 had... I'll have to try this...

Here it is: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/209833-format-sdx-stock-1050-weird-bug/?p=2713003

 

Before I fell in love with SpartaDOS, I used Smart DOS, TOP-DOS for Double Density disks, but I don't recall those doing UltraSpeed out of the box without hacks.