Vampire 600 and floppy issues

[Firestone]

Hi everyone...

Recently got my Vampire 600 board from kipper2k and it's great!

The only problem I'm experiencing is that the floppydrive seems to have problems reading disks when the board is attached. Problem goes away when removing the Vampire.

Floppy behaves just like it's an empty disk inserted (you know those three clicks) and gives "DF0:????".

I suspected the floppydrive at first, but I could not find anything wrong, so I tried it in one of my A1200s and it worked like a charm.

Some times it's able to read disks for a little while, but then it starts giving me read errors again (when the Vampire is attached).

Drive is a Chinon FZ-354 original in the A600.

I read some posts here saying that this might be a power issue, and maybe it is... I've tried three different original A500 PSUs on the machine, and the same thing happens. Tried without the harddrive with just the Vampire and floppy attached. Same problem.

Could it be a capacitor-problem?

Have measured the voltage from the floppy drive power connector on the motherboard with the Vampire attached and at the same time trying to access a disk. Power is stable between 11.99v and 12.00v it seems..

[Sandro]

Originally Posted by Firestone

Hi everyone...

Recently got my Vampire 600 board from kipper2k and it's great!

The only problem I'm experiencing is that the floppydrive seems to have problems reading disks when the board is attached. Problem goes away when removing the Vampire.

Floppy behaves just like it's an empty disk inserted (you know those three clicks) and gives "DF0:????".

I suspected the floppydrive at first, but I could not find anything wrong, so I tried it in one of my A1200s and it worked like a charm.

Some times it's able to read disks for a little while, but then it starts giving me read errors again (when the Vampire is attached).

Drive is a Chinon FZ-354 original in the A600.

I read some posts here saying that this might be a power issue, and maybe it is... I've tried three different original A500 PSUs on the machine, and the same thing happens. Tried without the harddrive with just the Vampire and floppy attached. Same problem.

Could it be a capacitor-problem?

Have measured the voltage from the floppy drive power connector on the motherboard with the Vampire attached and at the same time trying to access a disk. Power is stable between 11.99v and 12.00v it seems..

that's a problem of the floppy drive switch, you can change such switch or get a new floppy drive
to solve the problem momentarily insert and remove the floppy very quick 5 or 6 times

[Firestone]

You mean the switch in the drive itself? I really doubt it, because it got no problem in any of my other machines.......?

And no problem when the accelerator is disconnected...

[robinsonb5]

Originally Posted by Firestone

You mean the switch in the drive itself? I really doubt it, because it got no problem in any of my other machines.......?

And no problem when the accelerator is disconnected...

I would strongly suspect power issues (which I guess could be capacitors). Many floppy drives don't use the +12v line (to the point that many external enclosures don't bother to connect it at all!) - so check the voltage on the +5v line. Also bear in mind that it may be fine while the drive's idle but sag and ripple horribly as soon as the motor starts up. You may not be able to see that with a multimeter.

[Firestone]

Thats the conclusion I've come to too, Robinson... Time for recapping here I guess.

[Sandro]

Originally Posted by Firestone

You mean the switch in the drive itself? I really doubt it, because it got no problem in any of my other machines.......?

And no problem when the accelerator is disconnected...

yes the switch inside the floppy drive who is pushed down when you insert a disk
those switchs get bad with the time and sometimes works ok and other times fails
that's what is confusing you, thinking about the vampire is the problem

[Firestone]

Really doubt the switch. I know how a bad switch in these drives behave. Have tested it with floppy drive diagnostic software, and the switch is only trigged when a disk is inserted.

[kipper2k]

I can't remember which version core was put on your vampire, if it is V1.0 then you are pretty well in turbo mode and i am not sure but there may be a data xfer timing issue that is happening, you can always try programming the V0.2 core and see what happens then, also if you have a gotek, try that

[Firestone]

Thanks kipper. Will try it as soon as I get my usb blaster. I'll let you know

[majsta]

What happened to this did you fix the problem. This is strange.

[Firestone]

Got my USB blaster yesterday, and I'll keep you posted tomorrow after I have flashed the core

[Firestone]

This is strange.....
Have a look at the attached image. You can see I'm trying to extract a random .lha-archive to RAM: and it skips random files every time.
This is with the v1.0 core.

I tried to flash the v0.2 core tonight and the system booted fine. It even managed to extract the very same archive okay.
Unfortunately the system freezed when trying to run the setup file for MagicWB2. I don't know if this is a comatibility problem with this particular program, but anyway it did.

The floppy drive still got problems when running on both cores.

Removing the Vampire-board solves the floppy-problem.

I'm suspecting this may be due to bad capacitors after all....? Or could it be a faulty board?

[majsta]

I think that in the vampire social group on this forum we discussed about LHA, it seems that some versions have problem with core 1.0. So look in group what needs to be done.
Regarding floppy, I have no idea why you have the problems no one so far reported problem with floppy.

[Firestone]

Update on floppy drive issues:

The problem not reading disks seems to be related to the TG68-cores (all versions available at www.majsta.com)

Today I tried with the v2000 of the Apollo Phoenix-core and everything works flawlessly.....
Oh man, I'm so blown away by what these guys have achieved!

Hard to tell what the problem above could be caused by, but I guess I'm alone in this world experiencing it on the TG68-cores, but whatever.... who cares

[majsta]

This is really strange because I have tested every single version of A600 motherboard together with TG68 based core and Vampire and never seen floppy problem. Without that board itself I can't tell more what is all about.

[drusso66]

I seem to be having a similar issue when i insert a floppy disk though the Amiga just freezes, and i have had the amiga recently recapped and never gave me this problem before i installed the Vampire2. I also have a trapdoor memory and clock still installed so i will remove that, and also try a different PSU to see what happens.