External Gotek Cortex/FlashFloppy causes havoc!

[solarmon]

@ProdigalAmigan

I'll try with my A1200 (rev 2B) to see what the behaviour is, but I don't expect it to be different from my A500+.

What revision is your A1200? It shouldn't make a difference, but it is always good to know.

For floppy drive testing, I normally use X-Copy, Amiga Test Kit, and DriveTest. Obviously, testing in Workbench is also an option.

[ProdigalAmigan]

Solarmon as I think I mentioned before my Amiga 1200 is of the 1D4 variety.

[solarmon]

I've just tried on my A1200, exact same setup (just swapped out the A500) and, as expected, ko issues.

It could be an issue with the drive controller that is on DF2:. Have you used the same one to connect the fourth (DF3) drive?

It would be good to see some pictures of your setup.

[R4M]

Maybe you can convince one of your enclosures to answer to Sel3 when only two drives are attached. That way you could rule out that this is something specific to Sel3. That would pretty much only leave the signal quality as the cause of your problem.

[ProdigalAmigan]

Originally Posted by solarmon

I've just tried on my A1200, exact same setup (just swapped out the A500) and, as expected, ko issues.

... Thanks for your suggestions. I'll try swapping the drives around tomorrow. Will keep you posted on what happens.

[Jope]

Are your power supply voltages good? Perhaps the Cumana drives are loading down the system.

Are they the tall Chinon mechs or the slimmer PC style mechs?

[ProdigalAmigan]

Originally Posted by Jope

Are your power supply voltages good? Perhaps the Cumana drives are loading down the system. Are they the tall Chinon mechs or the slimmer PC style mechs?

Hey Jope thanks for replying. I also got your private message.
PSU voltages should be good. I am using a Corsair RM750X ATX PSU with an Amiga PSU adapter so there should be enough juice to power everything.

I am guessing that the Cumana CAX-354 model employs the slimmer PC style mech as I have also seen another taller Cumana external drive for the Amiga and that's not the kind that I have.

Right now I am mostly worried that there is something wrong with my Amiga. I mean if Cumana drives are loading down the system more than let's say Roctec drives and THAT is why DF3 is not working then it's okay.

Unfortunately I only have one other drive than the 2x Cumana and 1x Gotek in a noname external enclosure and that is the Roctec Slim you repaired for me before. However that one is not working properly anymore. Not sure if it'd be the belt again or something else (still would love to get it fixed so it could be used if at all possible)

So I can't do any further testing. Well short of spending money on buying external drives which are not Cumana but.... *sigh* I just wish I could figure out if there is some issue with my motherboard or if its just the Cumana drives that are power hungry....

I now switched the DF1 drive out for the other Cumana drive in the chain to see if this produced a different result and now DF3 (Gotek) starts formatting a blank disk as it should but stops with a Seek error at random.

Seems to me the "signal degradation" theory may hold true but question is why? The Amiga was designed with up to 3 external drives in mind, and my power supply should be more than enough still this happens.

Any way to fix it? Otherwise I'll just have to swap the Gotek in as needed. It's not 100% necessary to have it available at all times but it would have been nice.

Also I haven't been able to test it out with other external floppy drives either so it's difficult to do any sort of good troubleshooting.

[solarmon]

I would use Amiga Test Kit's floppy drive test feature on DF3 and see what that shows.

Are you using Workench to do the format and reading? Try using X-Copy or some other disk utility and see if that makes a difference.

Try cleaning the pins on the external floppy connector and the floppy drive controllers. Corrosion on the pins can add to the resistance and could cause signal degradation, if that is the issue.

Without seeing the state of your motherboard it is hard to tell whether there are potentially any issues with it.

[R4M]

If the available power is the problem, you could also directly connect the drives to your PSU. You could also try to use shorter cables.

[ProdigalAmigan]

Originally Posted by solarmon

I would use Amiga Test Kit's floppy drive test feature on DF3 and see what that shows.

I actually did this with all the drives connected up, and from what I remember it did say RDY signal was late or not detected (don't remember the exact message it showed). Also for testing writing (on DF1/DF2/DF3) it failed in this configuration with 3x drives. As soon as I go back to 2x drives everything works fine (be it Cumana 2x or Cumana 1x and Gotek 1x) ...

Are you using Workench to do the format and reading? Try using X-Copy or some other disk utility and see if that makes a difference.

I've been using both Workbench 3.9's Format feature and X-Copy Pro (The one with a snazzy purple interface) and the results are consistent with both ways of formatting be it the result is good (2x drives) or bad (3x drives).

Try cleaning the pins on the external floppy connector and the floppy drive controllers. Corrosion on the pins can add to the resistance and could cause signal degradation, if that is the issue.

I assume I need something like this? And spraying it on both the male (pin side) and female (passthrough connectors on the back of the external enclosures) side?

[ Show youtube player ]

Without seeing the state of your motherboard it is hard to tell whether there are potentially any issues with it.

Having had it looked at and recapped before it was sent off to Sweden and then having it looked at again when I sent it off to have the E127R fix done I assume there should be no major issues with it. And it's been working very nicely (knock on wood!) ... it's just this issue with the external drives...

At the end of the day it comes down to the fact that this computer and its external drives is 20+/30+ years old and nothing can be taken for granted. If I can only have 2x drives connected at the same time it's not the end of the world I guess...

[ProdigalAmigan]

Hey R4M thanks for the suggestions

Originally Posted by R4M

If the available power is the problem, you could also directly connect the drives to your PSU. You could also try to use shorter cables.

I don't think available power is an issue. I am using a Corsair RM750X modular PSU connected up to an ATX->Amiga PSU converter. I didn't buy it specifically for the Amiga but it so happened that I had one available.

I assume both connecting the drives directly to PSU and recabling the drives for shorter cables would require quite a bit of soldering in which case I would need to ask someone for help. Unfortunately I am not a very capable tinkerer. I realize it would have been a VERY good thing messing around with the Amiga in this day and age (it's almost a requirement when things needs fixing) but unfortunately .... I can't do these kinda things.

[solarmon]

@ProdigalAmigan

The WD-40 contact cleaner probably won't clean surface corrosion, which should be cleaned using an abrasive method.

Even though your power supply might seem OK, I would still check the +5 and +12V going out of the external floppy connector. There are associated components (E598 and E599) on the +5 and +12V lines that may have degraded enough to impact how many devices it can power effectively. The same applies for the signal lines too:

(from https://www.amigawiki.org/dnl/schematics/A1200_R1.pdf)

[ProdigalAmigan]

Thank you again for taking the time to try and help me. I appreciate each and every morsel of information.

Originally Posted by solarmon

The WD-40 contact cleaner probably won't clean surface corrosion, which should be cleaned using an abrasive method.

Any specific method that you would recommend? I want to make sure I do the right thing so I don't screw anything up. I'd be much less worried trying things on the PC side, but with the Amiga machines, they're old, quite "rare" and ... I just wouldn't want to cause any damage to my girl :-)

Even though your power supply might seem OK, I would still check the +5 and +12V going out of the external floppy connector.

There are associated components (E598 and E599) on the +5 and +12V lines that may have degraded enough to impact how many devices it can power effectively. The same applies for the signal lines too...

This is all going a bit over my head. I understand that I would need a multimeter to check voltages etc. but I don't have any idea how to actually work with such tools. I'm thinking I'd probably be looking at sending the machine off to have work done on it (again!) if needed...

Sometimes when coming up against things like this I get the feeling that it would have just been easier to keep on using WinUAE but I also have such love for the Amiga platform that I feel like I made the right decision in getting an Amiga again. It's more problematic these days when one can't do work inside the Amiga (lacking the skills)...


//ProdigalAmigan

[solarmon]

@ProdigalAmigan

For simplicity, just use a toothbrush to clean the pins and sockets, with the contact cleaner fluid, or isopropyl alcohol.

For better results, you might want to get a set of "Pen Style Scratch Brush Set" as those connector pins and sockets are pretty hard to clean.

You can just keep connecting/disconnecting the plugs/sockets which might scrape off any corrosion naturally.

[ProdigalAmigan]

Isopropyl Alcohol I can do. Toothbrush I can do. Will try

[ProdigalAmigan]

Hello everyone!

I don't know if it's too late to continue this thread so much later, but I just got back into messing around with my Amiga setup here. I updated the firmware of the external Gotek FlashFloppy drive to the latest.

I'm still getting issues when using 3x external floppy drives with my computer.
I know I could (and probably should) just accept things as they are and use no more than 2x external floppy drives since that works fine (I used to have a single external drive back in the day)....

BUT it is so weird that it annoys me. I did try cleaning off the pins with some isopropyl alcohol as I said I would but that did not bring me the desired result.

However I found now that (transferring some new Amiga demos to actual disks) having all external drives connected I can copy from DF3: (Gotek) to DF0: with no issues. But I can't copy from DF3: to DF1: and DF2: if I have Verify on in X-Copy. If I turn the verify off it copies but produces corrupt copies.

If I leave verify on X-Copy throws an error "Couldn't find 2nd Sync" or something along those lines...

BUT if I copy from DF3: to DF0: then I can take the resulting floppy disk and verify or read it using external floppy DF1: or DF2: with no noticeable issue or problem.

Disabling the DF3: drive (off switch in the back of it) does make it not be detected by the system anymore and only DF1: and DF2: showing BUT the problems decribed still persists. Once DF3: is disconnected physically from the drivechain and only DF1 and DF2 remain plugged in everything works perfectly again.

Also it doesn't seem to matter which drive sits where in the chain. It seems to be the fact that I have 3x external drives plugged in that it is somehow causing the problems...

I don't know if it makes a difference but my specific Amiga 1200 is a 1D4 Escom(?) variant with the floppy fix reverted and a "real" Amiga floppy drive installed as DF0:.

Right now I just leave the External Gotek/Flashfloppy (DF3) unplugged until when I need to use it as a way of "getting around" the issue.



//ProdigalAmigan.

[PDrill]

I haven't read this thread completely, only the first post but I thought I'll write about a similar problem I've encountered. I have a few Amigas and 3 external drives and I have used all of them succesfully in any configuration. Until I encountered a problem which took quite a bit of troubleshooting.

One day I, after not using my A1200 for a while, I set up a system which included the Escom A1200, External drive 'A' and External drive 'B'. All the stuff had always worked perfectly but now all the floppy functions - especially writing resulting in all kinds of errors - in any drive went crazy. I just could not understand why. Finally I found out that the A1200 and Ext drive 'A' worked perfectly, but if I added more drives everything went crazy again. If I removed ext drive 'A' or replaced it with some other external drive 'C' (=having A1200 + 'B' or A1200 + 'B' + 'C'), all works well.

So, my ext drive 'A' has some kind of electrical incompatibility when used with my A1200 *TOGETHER WITH* some other external drive. The drives work well together on my A500, but not with the A1200

[ProdigalAmigan]

Originally Posted by PDrill

One day I, after not using my A1200 for a while, I set up a system which included the Escom A1200, External drive 'A' and External drive 'B'. All the stuff had always worked perfectly but now all the floppy functions - especially writing resulting in all kinds of errors ...

The drives work well together on my A500, but not with the A1200

PDrill Kiitos paljon for telling me about this. It's very interesting and it really sounds like the exact same situation that I have here. So now the question is if it is one of my drives which is the problem, or if this could possibly be a hardware quirk with the Escom 1D4 Amiga variant (it has quite some other quirks that I had help fix after I bought it).

If there's something that can be done to make it work well with 3x external drives that would be ideal, but if not then I'll just have to keep doing it the way I am now, hooking the third drive (Gotek) up when I need it ......

[PDrill]

It's not the Gotek itself that causes the problem, it's the ext floppy 'control electronics' that makes the problem and you just happen to have the Gotek in it. Get yourself another ext drive and put the Gotek in it (naturally testing the new drive first to see that it does'n create the same problen).

Like I said, my problem was created by a normal ext drive (which had the original mechanical drive in it) so the culprit has to be the controller part.

EDIT: My A1200 is an 1D4 also.

[ProdigalAmigan]

Thanks again for your reply!
So it is the controller board of the external enclosure used for the Gotek/Flashfloppy drive that is causing the issue only when using 3x drives you say?

Unfortunately at present I only have these drives available to me. I would get another Cumana CAX-354 and put the Gotek in that, but getting that case apart is NOT easy from what I have found out online. Maybe best bet would be to go with another Cumana drive (even if not the identical model) as I guess the controller most likely would be similar or identical?

Also I just wonder if you have tried 3x external floppys on your Escom (1D4) Amiga 1200 switching out the "known problematic drive" for another one, and if so, did that solve the problem for you?

//Prodigal Amigan