Strange 1050 drive read issues

[sideburn]

Hey all I’ve noticed this odd behavior with more than one 1059 drive and wondering what the issue is or how this could be happeneing. 
 

I recently repaired a couple drives and they can now read and wrote to “new” floppies without issue but when I pull some old disks out that I’ve had from the ‘80s l, some disks, of course are bad and won’t read or intermittently read. 
 

the weird thing is after I try a bad disk and then put a known new good disk it the drive struggles to read them too. It slowly recovers and then can read the hood disks. I problem. I power cycle the drive and it makes no difference I just have to keep trying to good disks and eventually it recovers back to normal again. I’ve seen this behavior on at least two drives I had maybe even the third drive I’ll have to try it again and see. 
 

how could this be happening? It’s like the drive had a memory even on power down. Could something be happening to the head itself? It doesn’t matter which “bad” disks I try. Any old disk that has read issues causes the problem. 

Edited February 27, 2023 by sideburn

[+kheller2]

It’s possible the old disks are losing their disk coating and it’s dirtying up the head.   Clean the head after a bad disk and see if that helps.  There are many threads here about this.  

[TGB1718]

Could be contamination from the old disks depositing on the head and after a few runs with a good disk it's

rubbing off onto the good disks, I've had similar issues, so as a rule of thumb, I keep the top open

when using old disks and if I have any issues, just clean the head.

 

@kheller2 beat me to it by a second

 

Edited February 27, 2023 by TGB1718

[sideburn]

1 minute ago, kheller2 said:

It’s possible the old disks are losing their disk coating and it’s dirtying up the head.   Clean the head after a bad disk and see if that helps.  There are many threads here about this.  

Wow I visually inspected the disks but I didn’t think it could put that much “dirt” on the head that quick and cause it to fail but it seems like the only thing that could be happening. I’ll crack it back open next time and try cleaning the head after. 
 

I have another weird issue with a drive that I put my original Happy 1050 board in it and it will init properly on power up and zero the track head and spin up the motor as it should but then it will quit doing this intermittently and be dead. Then I wait a while and it’s back to life again.

 

Similar situation l, I just have to wait and it comes back to life. I’m guessing that it might be a RAM issue on the Happy board but when it powers up ok and I run the diagnostics in a loop the RAM and ROM tests pass consistently and the drive will run for hours without issue. Then you power down and back up and there’s a 30% chance it will be “dead” again and then come back to life when it feels like it. 

[xrbrevin]

use high content isopropyl alcohol. the head is ceramic so you dont have to be too gentle if you find a stubborn bit 🙂

[TGB1718]

2 hours ago, sideburn said:

I have another weird issue with a drive that I put my original Happy 1050 board in it and it will init properly on power up and zero the track head and spin up the motor as it should but then it will quit doing this intermittently and be dead. Then I wait a while and it’s back to life again.

 

Similar situation l, I just have to wait and it comes back to life. I’m guessing that it might be a RAM issue on the Happy board but when it powers up ok and I run the diagnostics in a loop the RAM and ROM tests pass consistently and the drive will run for hours without issue. Then you power down and back up and there’s a 30% chance it will be “dead” again and then come back to life when it feels like it.

I had exactly the same issue with a Happy 1050, nothing I tried fixed it and as I no longer use the "Happy" functionality

I put a US Doubler in and it runs perfectly, my guess is it's some code in the ROM, but didn't pursue it further.

 

I did remove the RAM and have a RAM tester and it checks out fine.

[xrbrevin]

2 hours ago, TGB1718 said:

nothing I tried fixed it

does the happy mod require the jumpers to be orientated a certain way?

i know the USD does

Edited February 27, 2023 by xrbrevin
syntax error

[TGB1718]

I don't really know, the drive came with the Happy already fitted, so I just made the required changes for USD

[_The Doctor__]

All things described above are good advice, power down happy drive longer time before turning back on, clean connections are a must, sometimes a solder reflow helps as well. so get busy with deoxit cleaning of chip legs and sockets paying attention to orientation of EVERY component you clean, reseat, and reflow.

make sure everything is fully seated. Sometime they pop back out and BITD some upgrades came with very thin zip ties etc to hold board down by the sockets.

[sideburn]

3 hours ago, xrbrevin said:

use high content isopropyl alcohol. the head is ceramic so you dont have to be too gentle if you find a stubborn bit 🙂

Good to know. I was wondering when I was trying to fix them. Both needed track zero sensors and alignment. One also needed a cap kit job and had a bad U7 (RIOT). 

[sideburn]

2 hours ago, TGB1718 said:

I had exactly the same issue with a Happy 1050, nothing I tried fixed it and as I no longer use the "Happy" functionality

I put a US Doubler in and it runs perfectly, my guess is it's some code in the ROM, but didn't pursue it further.

 

I did remove the RAM and have a RAM tester and it checks out fine.

Yeah I don’t need it either these days. I just hate broken stuff. But I think I remember as a kid it acted like this when I was using it it all the time to support my piracy business 😂 

[_The Doctor__]

If your drives are not aligned they won't normally be booting reading or writing interchangeably with other disks from other known good drives. They may also have trouble with commercial factory games and software.

as noted dirty head and dirty disks need cleaning.

 

If you're track zero is incorrect the drive will not want to boot disk across the different density formats. It may not want to format either.

Make sure RPM's are 288

Edited February 27, 2023 by _The Doctor__

[sideburn]

32 minutes ago, xrbrevin said:

does the happy mod require the jumpers to be orientated a certain way?

i know the USD does

What jumpers? This is an original happy drive I bought back in 1983 or so. No jumpers on the board. Looks like it’s just a 6502, 3 RAM chips, and a ROM. 

[_The Doctor__]

the jumpers on the 1050 pcb itself that select ROM types... if you don't know these things, it might be good to read a bit before mucking about.

[bandit]

Jumpers on the 1050 board, only US doubler would have you check for ROM or EPROM and change jumpers if needed. Happy did not need.

 

ALWAYS Check drive speed first for errors 288 rpm

 

[sideburn]

12 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

All things described above are good advice, power down happy drive longer time before turning back on, clean connections are a must, sometimes a solder reflow helps as well. so get busy with deoxit cleaning of chip legs and sockets paying attention to orientation of EVERY component you clean, reseat, and reflow.

make sure everything is fully seated. Sometime they pop back out and BITD some upgrades came with very thin zip ties etc to hold board down by the sockets.

Yeah I’ve been working on this drive off and on for a couple months. Everything’s deoxited, cleaned, reflowed etc.  after that and the track zero sensors replaced and cap kit I almost threw in the towel and thought the drive head was bad. Long before i finally pu the happy board back on it. I FINALLy got it to work by starting up a read and then unplugged the stepper motor cable and manually moved the head up and down until it started reading and then I knew I was good and it was just an alignment problem at this point. Same went for the other drive. So then I got them dialed in using the 1050 diags disk. And after all that I figured I’d see if the happy still works. 

Edited February 27, 2023 by sideburn

[sideburn]

2 minutes ago, bandit said:

Jumpers on the 1050 board, only US doubler would have you check for ROM or EPROM and change jumpers if needed. Happy did not need.

 

ALWAYS Check drive speed first for errors 288 rpm

 

Both drives are spot on at 288. 

[sideburn]

10 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

If your drives are not aligned they won't normally be booting reading or writing interchangeably with other disks from other known good drives. They may also have trouble with commercial factory games and software.

Pretty sure I’ve got them as good as they’re going to get now. Using the track zero alignment on then 1059 discs disk. As long as using a copy of that is ok. I mean once I got a drive to work I made a physical diags disk from from my virtual floppy drive. 

[_The Doctor__]

Your diags disk needs to be made on a known good aligned drive, not from any you've fixed. If you made the disk on a non factory aligned drive or not using a factory alignment disk... you will create your own batch of drives that will only be aligned to each other and won't work with other disks or drives from anyone else including store bought commercial game/utility/business/whathaveyou disks.

[+kheller2]

"1059 discs disk" ?

[TGB1718]

As getting a "real" alignment disk today is a bit of an impossibility, what I did to align my drives

was use a genuine commercial game disk, although not a perfect solution but I found after doing it

this way I could read all my game disks and my old personal disks too.

[sideburn]

5 minutes ago, kheller2 said:

"1059 discs disk" ?

Edited…

[sideburn]

13 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

Your diags disk needs to be made on a known good aligned drive, not from any you've fixed. If you made the disk on a non factory aligned drive or not using a factory alignment disk... you will create your own batch of drives that will only be aligned to each other and won't work with other disks or drives from anyone else including store bought commercial game/utility/business/whathaveyou disks.

That’s what I was afraid of. I now recall that I made it from an”working” drive I bought off eBay. It looked factory but no telling. The drives are reading many of my original disks from the old days. I do have a factory DOS disk I can try too. 

[sideburn]

9 minutes ago, TGB1718 said:

As getting a "real" alignment disk today is a bit of an impossibility, what I did to align my drives

was use a genuine commercial game disk, although not a perfect solution but I found after doing it

this way I could read all my game disks and my old personal disks too.

Right. I have maybe one or two original factory disks. I did try and original Archon disk and it got about half way and froze up. But no telling on its condition because tons of these old disks aren’t working. 
 

i see diag disks on eBay but a bit pricey. 

Edited February 27, 2023 by sideburn

[+kheller2]

So, a few things...

1) Using Archon might not be the best idea ..  copy protected disks might pose some issues.  Someone else should speak about that.

2) "diag disks"  do you mean 1050 Diagnostic Disk? That's great for running diags.. that isn't an alignment disk..

3) You need an alignment disk -- and there are ones made specifically for the Tandon mech.  [Others might also work, hence using a factory supplied disk like DOS 2.0 might be our only bet right now)