Drive motor never turns on
#1
I bought a SCP a couple months ago - but haven't had time to give it a try till recently.
I bought it in hopes of archiving about 300 Atari disks (copies - not priceless originals) that I received with an 800XL on ebay a year ago.
I've attempted buying Atari 1050 drives on ebay - but never got them to work - so I decided to cut my losses and try an SCP with what I believe are good IBM compatible drives.

I have a variety of drives - both 40 and 80 track DD - no beige HD drives.

The three drives I have tried so far - all fail in the same way - the index pulse isn't found - which isn't surprising - since at the time I get the error - the drive isn't spinning.

Here is my typical setup - I have an identical looking IBM PC compatible floppy drive cable as shown in the SCP manual.  Complete with annoying pin 1 orientation on the motherboard end - which
means I have to fold the cable over itself when inserted into the SCP - so it exits away from the 34 pin connector - and not over the board.

I do have the pin 1 on the cable (red stripe) oriented correctly.

I am powering the drives I have been testing with an external full size floppy drive enclosure from a TRS-80.
TRS-80 drives work fine in the enclosure - and I verified 5 & 12 volts being supplied to the IBM drive.

I am connecting the drive to the non-twisted end of the cable - and when SCP does a drive scan it says that is drive 0.

It can successfully perform a maximum track number scan and is able to differentiate between a 40 and an 80 track drive.

HOWEVER - whenever I attempt a copy operation - it fails miserably since the drive isn't spinning.

Now - I'm under the impression that if the drive is "Selected" properly from the controller - then only that drive will respond to track stepping requests.

So - it seems to me - that if it passes the maximum track count exercise - it should be properly configured.


Obviously, I'm making a lot of assumptions here - and probably wrong about some of them - since it's not working.
I'm currently using a Tandon TM65-2L which I believe someone reported as working.

Attached should be three pictures - one showing the SCP & floppy cable hookup - showing I have pin 1 correct.  (The 5.25 floppy connectors at the other end are keyed so they only fit the correct way)
And two more pictures showing the meager jumper configuration options for this drive.

JP4 has position "0" jumpered  and JP3 has A&B jumpered.

Drive showing Jumpers
   

Drive Top View
   

SCP Cable Alignment
   

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks!

Jim
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#2
I have never seen a Tandon drive before, so I don't have any experience with this one. Either the drive motor on this drive is not working, the cable is bad, or the SuperCard Pro board was damaged. If you ever plugged the cable in backwards, the board would be immediately damaged. The damage can be anything from no index to no motor.

Typically it's obvious when the SuperCard Pro board is damaged because Huey and/or Duey will usually have a burn mark on surface of the chip. Can you take a close up picture of those chips and post it?

If the board is fine, then it could be that you don't have the correct jumper settings for the drive.
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#3
(12-08-2019, 05:21 PM)admin Wrote: Typically it's obvious when the SuperCard Pro board is damaged because Huey and/or Duey will usually have a burn mark on surface of the chip.  Can you take a close up picture of those chips and post it?

If the board is fine, then it could be that you don't have the correct jumper settings for the drive.

I'm pretty sure I never inserted the cable incorrectly.
I used the same cable with a 3.5 drive originally - just to make sure things were working prior to starting experimenting with 5.25 drives.

Anyhow - here's the hi-res picture of the chips in question:

hi-res picture

The picture exceeded the size limits for a post - and I didn't want to reduce the resolution to fit...

Jim
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#4
The chips look good. If you have a 3.5" drive still you could try dumping a 3.5" disk and see if the motor comes on. If so, then it's a drive issue. If not, then it is either the cable or the board. All of the signals are the same between 5.25" and 3.5" drives.
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