A4000TX dual Gotek setup, having issues with DF1:

[brett71]

Hi all,

I'm working on setting up my A4000TX that I received from Hese. For peripherals, I currently have a CF-to-IDE adapter and a DVD-ROM on the IDE controller, and on the floppy port, I have dual Goteks plugged in and having an odd issue.

My drives are configured and connected thusly: My DF0: drive is jumpered as S0 and is located at the end of the cable, on the other side of the twist. My DF1: drive is jumpered as S1 and is in the middle of the cable.

If I cold or warm boot the machine and do not have a USB stick inserted with a disk image selected and active (not ejected), the machine does not recognize that it has a DF1: drive at all, i.e. if I go into the Early Startup menu and go into the "Boot Options", no DF1: appears. If I cold or warm boot the machine with a USB stick plugged into the Gotek and a disk image selected and active, then DF1: is present in the Early Startup and works as expected throughout the session.

My DF0: drive works properly in either scenario: with or without a USB stick plugged in.

I have tried swapping the S0/S1 jumpers, and the issues persist but the affected DF1: drive switches to the new S1 drive. This seems to suggest the problem might not be with the Goteks. I have not tried replicating this issue with actual floppy drives yet to see if I have the same problem.

Does anyone know if this is some sort of weird quirk with the A4000TX board, or some strange interaction between the two Goteks? Is there something in the configuration that is influencing this behavior?

Thanks!

[brett71]

OK, found the fix for this on my own, implemented it, and now have my df1: working properly.

In the FlashFloppy documentation, I found this section:

Forcing Drive Identification
Amiga hosts expect a drive ID sequence from external and Amiga-high-density drives on pin 34 of the floppy interface when the drive motor is disabled (pin 34 carries the Ready/RDY signal when the drive motor is enabled). In contrast, FlashFloppy's default interface mode (interface = shugart) permanently attaches RDY to pin 34, regardless of motor.

This default behaviour usually works fine:

Drive ID signalling is not a strict requirement for DF0
External drive enclosures often implement the drive-ID circuitry
A mounted disk image asserts RDY which happens to match the Amiga ID sequence for a DD drive anyway
However, there are a couple of cases where this default behaviour may not suffice:

Using high-density disk images (1760kB formatted capacity)
Using as an external drive with a passive interface cable, if FlashFloppy does not assert RDY during boot (eg. eject-at-power-on, no USB stick, or too slow to initialise)
In these cases FlashFloppy can be forced to emit the drive ID on pin 34 at all times, replacing RDY, by adding interface = amiga to FF.CFG.



Changing the interface from "jc" to "amiga" in FF.CFG, then sticking the USB stick into the Gotek corrected the behavior and now my DF1: is showing up at boot without a USB stick, as one would expect.

Just putting this here if anyone else has run into a similar issue.