Anyone have an A1200 + HxC?

[KulorXL]

I'm having an issue with mine and I'm wondering if anyone else with this setup can show me how they're supposed to behave when working properly. I bought this preconfigured USB HxC, with a preconfigured thumb drive, but it doesn't seem to want to actually load anything. I'm replacing the internal floppy drive. The screen turns on and lets me select a disc image, and when I get to the purple "insert a floppy" screen, the piezo buzzer clicks, and the HxC seems to indicate that it's trying to read different tracks, but the Amiga never actually detects that there's a disc. The screen on the HxC continually alternates between T:002/080 and T:003/080, with a piezo click every time it switches. The S:0 never changes. What are these supposed to say when it's working properly? Anyone have any ideas for what the issue might be? Allegedly the Amiga worked perfectly with the original drive, but I have no floppies with which to verify that.

[+OLD CS1]

I cannot help with your specific question as I only use real floppy drives with my Amigas.  However, I am curious about the S: sector indicator on the HxC.  The Amiga reads a full track at a time, so it would seem to me the sector indicator should remain at S:0, unless the HxC interpolates each sector number as the full track is read.

 

Does this behavior, the alternating between tracks 2 and 3, persist on all of your images?  If you are in the US and you have your original drive, I can send out a couple of disks for you.

[KulorXL]

5 minutes ago, OLD CS1 said:

I cannot help with your specific question as I only use real floppy drives with my Amigas.  However, I am curious about the S: sector indicator on the HxC.  The Amiga reads a full track at a time, so it would seem to me the sector indicator should remain at S:0, unless the HxC interpolates each sector number as the full track is read.

 

Does this behavior, the alternating between tracks 2 and 3, persist on all of your images?  If you are in the US and you have your original drive, I can send out a couple of disks for you.

To clarify, the full output of the display alternates between:

T:002/080 S:0
T:003/080 S:0

So that part does remain at 0. The handful of images I've tried all behave the exact same way.

I am in the US, and actually I just remembered I might have a single real floppy game sitting around that I can try, but if I can't dig that up, I will definitely take you up on that offer, much appreciated!

Edited January 23 by KulorXL
clarification

[KulorXL]

Update, I discovered my Amiga is apparently an Escom revision, which are notorious for having issues with these things. Going to attempt a bodge fix, and will document the results here.

[+OLD CS1]

3 hours ago, KulorXL said:

Update, I discovered my Amiga is apparently an Escom revision, which are notorious for having issues with these things. Going to attempt a bodge fix, and will document the results here.

Oh, man.  I had forgotten all about those.  IIRC, they have some quirkiness with the drive interface to allow using standard 3.5" drives in DD mode.

[KulorXL]

That was 100% the problem. I followed the instructions on this video:

 

Located this bodge wire on the back of my board...

 

Snipped it off, and soldered on this different bodge wire...

 

...and now it works perfectly!

 

So if anyone's trying to get an HxC working on an Amiga 1200, and it just doesn't want to actually load anything, this is worth looking into.

[+OLD CS1]

Nice work!