Multiple Floppy Drives not working on A500 DF0, but Gotek does

[jraclarke]

Hi all,

Recently I posted about my Epson SMD 300 for the A500 suddenly stopping working. I tried cleaning the head, chip change etc, but no luck. In the end I bought a "new" tested one (an Epson SMD 400) and have hooked it up as DF0.

I'm getting exactly the same behaviour - the disks, which were reading fine before the 300 broke, are not reading at all, or come up with disk-read errors.

I have also tested with XCopy to look for clues - I load XCopy from a Gotek as DF1 (I only have kick 1.3, but boot select DF1 using Action Replay II), with a blank floppy in DF0 - the Epson drive:

i) Formatting the blank disk doesn't work, it still retains the original disk Info, and checkdisk returns failures for each sector (code 2's).
ii) An XCopy of Workbench from DF1 to DF0 doesn't work either, it won't boot or show disk info, or checkdisk successfully.
iii) Checkdisk on any working disk in DF0 returns failures, even on non-copy-protected disks.

I'm guessing that as I can't format and copy with DF0 that it's more than just an alignment issue otherwise the drive should be able to read/write its own disks.

Does anyone have any idea why these two drives (the 300 and 400) wouldn't work as DF0, but a Gotek would? Even any ideas as to what I can do to diagnose/narrow down the problem would be welcome.

Many thanks,

James

[jraclarke]

Just a quick question. The only chip that I didn't have a spare for was the Gary chip.

Is there a possibility that disks could be read via a Gotek, but not via a physical floppy drive, if this chip wasn't working?

Thanks,