A12oo works with one external drive, but not the other?

[chrisgreen]

Hi

I have encountered a strange issue this afternoon with my external floppy drives. I've recently bought two Amiga 1200 machines. One has a 1D1 board and 3.1 ROMs, the other has a 1D4 board and 3.0 ROMs.

I have two external floppy drives.

One is an old model Cumana CAX 354 (metal case) identical to this one:



The other is the later model of Cumana CAX 354 (plastic case) identical to this one:



Both drives work fine (either connected on their own or daisy chained) on the machine with the 1D1 board and 3.1 ROMs.

However, only the drive in the plastic case works on the machine with the 1D4 board and the 3.0 ROMs (and it works absolutely fine on both machines). When I go into the Boot Selector menu by holding both mouse buttons, it sees the non-working drive as disabled. Enabling it makes no difference though.

Does anyone know what the cause might be, given that both drives are confirmed as working on the 1D1-based machine.

Thanks
Chris

[solarmon]

Load up Amiga Test Kit and check the floppy disk drive signals and see what is and isn't working, if any at all.

[pipper]

Could the board in question be an ESCOM one?

[solarmon]

Originally Posted by pipper

Could the board in question be an ESCOM one?

The ESCOM floppy mod should only affect internal DF0 drives.

[chrisgreen]

The board is not an Escom board, it’s a Commodore era 1D4. No bodge on the floppy controller and the internal floppy header works fine (verified with a proper Amiga 1200 Chinon drive). Will try next get a Gotek onto it later today and see what Amiga Test Kit can tell me about the external drive that won’t work (and the one that does).

[PDrill]

I don't know/remember which REV my A1200 is, but I think it's a 1D4 also and I had a strange problem similar to yours. The thing is, I have a few external drives and they all work in any combinations and with all of my Amigas *EXCEPT!* One of my external drives messes up everything if there are more (2 or 3) external drives connected to the A1200. If it is the only external drive connected, all is well, but if I have A1200 + THIS EXTERNAL DRIVE + ANOTHER EXTERNAL DRIVE, then all the floppy functions start to fail including the internal drive.

So propably one of your external drives is as incompatible as the one I'm having problems.

[Jpor]

Originally Posted by chrisgreen

Hi

I have encountered a strange issue this afternoon with my external floppy drives. I've recently bought two Amiga 1200 machines. One has a 1D1 board and 3.1 ROMs, the other has a 1D4 board and 3.0 ROMs.

I have two external floppy drives.

One is an old model Cumana CAX 354 (metal case) identical to this one:



The other is the later model of Cumana CAX 354 (plastic case) identical to this one:



Both drives work fine (either connected on their own or daisy chained) on the machine with the 1D1 board and 3.1 ROMs.

However, only the drive in the plastic case works on the machine with the 1D4 board and the 3.0 ROMs (and it works absolutely fine on both machines). When I go into the Boot Selector menu by holding both mouse buttons, it sees the non-working drive as disabled. Enabling it makes no difference though.

Does anyone know what the cause might be, given that both drives are confirmed as working on the 1D1-based machine.

Thanks
Chris

Just out of a matter of interest have you actually tried 3.1 ROMs on your 1D4 board? You never know you might have an issue with the 3.0 ROMs.

Also have had issues in the past with a 1D1 where first I lost power to the external floppy port but only data and then finally Data went. The board in question, does it have enough power going through it? I.e no leaking or Bulging caps. Same PSU used for both boards as part of your tests?