Troubleshooting a 1050 Disk Drive

[Pounce]

Hi everyone! I`m new around here and new(ish) to 8-bit computing.

Back in the 80s I had used a TI-99 4/A, an Apple II clone and a Commodore 64, but lately I've had a desire to get back into it, thanks to Dave Murray the 8-Bit guy and a few others on YouTube.

 

 Anyway, I bought an Atari 800 XL on eBay and it works great, but thanks to my poor research, I've gone through several products to use as a disk drive, like the Uno Cart, an SPIO2PC connector from Retro Lemon and using a modern PC as storage, and an SDrive Max (I said I was really bad at this). I got to the point where I said to heck with it and bought a 1050 disk drive, also from eBay. It was listed as 'Tested and working'.

I guess to no one's surprise, it's not. It spins up when turned on, buzzes as the read/write heads move, but no version of Atari DOS (2.5/3/4) can get anything out of the drive. I cannot format a disk (using new-old stock 5.25" DS DD disks. I know the 1050 is an SS drive, but that shouldn't matter) or anything else. The drive switches on back left of the drive are in the right position, and the SPIO cable is connected to the center port as the instructions say. (The 1050 came with everything except for the Atari DOS 3 diskette, which not even sure if it was supposed to).

Anyway! That was a lot of preamble and my way of asking for help, tips or ideas to get this finally up and running. Or should I just get another drive? Throw it all in a bin?

[_The Doctor__]

Remember to hold OPTION key during power on til boot noise is heard

 

If you are using sio2pc to load a dos, both of the devices can not be D1:

You have to empty the slot once it's done booting and then turn the drive on using a proper soft sector DSDD / M2DD or SSDD disks

Then you can try formatting the disks etc.

 

You can't have devices not prepared to share the SIO bus attached. Some sio2pc 10502pc solutions and SDrive max units do not have the final piece of this pie in them... so when disconnected from the SIO chain, everything else starts working again.

 

Give that a try if it works great, if not more troubleshooting will be needed.

Edited February 8, 2023 by _The Doctor__

[Pounce]

I'm loading DOS from the UnoCart/SD card.

[_The Doctor__]

You would have to make sure the UNO cart gives up Dx: control. You could power it all down then try assigning your Disk Drive as D2: and see if you can format  D2: then write DOS  D2:

if that completes...

power it all down again and assign Drive to D1: again and reboot without the uno or whatever.

[Pounce]

Oh, that's an idea! I'll try that! Thank you!

Just to be clear, I'm not using the SIO2PC cable/PC or the SDrive-Max.

 

The only things in the current set up is the 800 XL, 1050 disk drive, and the UnoCart to load DOS.

[Pounce]

That absolutely worked!! Thank you SO much!!

 

It formatted the diskette right away instead of repeatedly coughing up error messages.

[_The Doctor__]

No problem, glad to help.