Floppy Drive on greaseweazle

[Planetinfinity]

Hello,

a couple of month ago I bought a greazeweazle and two 3,5 Zoll floppy drives (Mitsumi D353M3D and Samsung SFD-321B)

According to the greaseweazle dokuwiki it should not be necessary to add power to the floppy drives in order to read a disk, but when I don't use power I don't hear any head moving or any sound when I use the gw command.

When I use a power suppy 12V and 5V (from kryoflux) the mitsumi drive led is always on and the Samsung drive does nothing.

- What should be the correct behaviour when power on such a floppy ?
- Did you power on the floppy drive or can you confirm that it should work without any power (only usb) ?

BR Planetinfinity

[lesta_smsc]

My Greaseweazle is powered by USB port on laptop and in turn the Greaseweazle powers the floppy drive! No additional power is needed. I'm using Sony drive.

[Mikerochip]

Depends on the drive, and the greaseweazle.

Many drives can work ok from a bluepill GW, I imagine most drives can work fine from one of the bigger GW devices.

When you run the gw -info
does it tell you the GW device info?

Are the floppy cables themselves ok?

[Planetinfinity]

Originally Posted by lesta_smsc

My Greaseweazle is powered by USB port on laptop and in turn the Greaseweazle powers the floppy drive! No additional power is needed. I'm using Sony drive.

So you didn't connect anything to the floppy power connector, correct ?
Does the LED blink or do you hear the normal floppy noise when you switch on the greaseweazle ?

[Planetinfinity]

Originally Posted by Mikerochip

Depends on the drive, and the greaseweazle.

Many drives can work ok from a bluepill GW, I imagine most drives can work fine from one of the bigger GW devices.

When you run the gw -info
does it tell you the GW device info?

Are the floppy cables themselves ok?

When I run "gw info" I see the normal output like the SN the version 0.22 etc. etc. no information about the floppy drive is visible

About the floppy cable I don't know I don't have another device were I could test the cable. Is looks normal like a normal floppy drive.

I could do a photo that shows my hardware configuration.

[lesta_smsc]

Originally Posted by Planetinfinity

So you didn't connect anything to the floppy power connector, correct ?

Does the LED blink or do you hear the normal floppy noise when you switch on the greaseweazle ?

This is how the wiring looks for my set up.

Floppy disk drive LED works and makes the usual noise when reading / writing but only when the Greaseweazle is controlling it eg when you choose the script to read or write. Otherwise it appears not to do anything.

[Planetinfinity]

Hello,

so your floppy power connector is directly connected through the greaceweazle. I don't use a power connection between the greaseweazle and the floppy therefore I used an external power supply.

Please find my picture without the external power supply attached to the floppy 4 pin connector

[lesta_smsc]

I use no additional power supply for the floppy disk drive. I power Greaseweazle by USB and this in turn supplies the power needed for the floppy drive. So neat and easy.

On your Greaseweazle board it has a floppy power connector.

I'm quite pleased mine doesn't need any additional power! One day I will make a neat interface but until then, the dupont connectors will suffice.

[Planetinfinity]

Originally Posted by lesta_smsc

I use no additional power supply for the floppy disk drive. I power Greaseweazle by USB and this in turn supplies the power needed for the floppy drive. So neat and easy.

On your Greaseweazle board it has a floppy power connector.

I'm quite pleased mine doesn't need any additional power! One day I will make a neat interface but until then, the dupont connectors will suffice.

Do you think connecting the greaceweazle power output with the floppy drive instead of my power supply does solve my issue ?

Unfortunately I don't have a 4pin to 4pin floppy disk power cable. When I look at the greaceweazle F7 v2 I see that the description for the left pin is 5V both middle pins are ground and the right is 12(NV). Do you know whether this is the same on the floppy and I should connect the greaseweazle power output with the floppy power input 1:1 ?

BR Planetinfinity

[Mikerochip]

Originally Posted by Planetinfinity

Do you think connecting the greaceweazle power output with the floppy drive instead of my power supply does solve my issue ?

Unfortunately I don't have a 4pin to 4pin floppy disk power cable. When I look at the greaceweazle F7 v2 I see that the description for the left pin is 5V both middle pins are ground and the right is 12(NV). Do you know whether this is the same on the floppy and I should connect the greaseweazle power output with the floppy power input 1:1 ?

BR Planetinfinity

You can just 4 female-female dupont leads.

[Planetinfinity]

Originally Posted by Mikerochip

You can just 4 female-female dupont leads.

I tried to translate "dupont leads" but I am not able to. Could you please let me know what "dupont leads" bedeutet. Does is mean 1:1 ?

[Jope]

Jump wires..

[Planetinfinity]

Ok, "dupont leads" are "jump wires".
But still the question is does it work when I connect the pins 1:1 means:

Floppy power connector left -> greaceweazle connector left
Floppy power connector 2 -> greaceweazle connector 2
Floppy power connector 3 -> greaceweazle connector 3
Floppy power connector right -> greaceweazle connector right

Or are pins are twisted ?

Maybe the question is completely stupid but usually I don't play around with electronic stuff and therefore I don't have such routine (and knowledge).

[Jope]

You should only need to connect the +5 and ground with two wires.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berg_connector

A multimeter would help in double checking.

[Planetinfinity]

Thank you very very much for all your hints. I was able to connect the 5V and group from the greaseweazle to the floppy and I was able to read from disk. I additionally found out that both of my floppy drives were defect but the 3rd (I received yesterday) worked fine.

I have another issue but because this is unrelated to this topic I created a new forum entry https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=1454173

[jonni]

I bought bunch of Mitsumi D353M3D recently and noticed the same that power led was always on. On further inspection it seems that floppy connector was connected upside down from the the factory, so empty notch was pointing up when it was supposed to point down (as there is notch hole in the pcb).

So it was easy fix by clamping floppy cable where other connector notch was reversed (or grinding the plastic away so you can connect the cable right way). After that power led was not always on, and everything worked fine. Just for future reference if anyone else runs on power led always on problem.

[andyhants]

Does anyone know if it’s possible to use a Greaseweazle on a PC to read/write 3.5” floppies under WinUAE instead of ADFs?

[lesta_smsc]

Originally Posted by andyhants

Does anyone know if it’s possible to use a Greaseweazle on a PC to read/write 3.5” floppies under WinUAE instead of ADFs?

Yes. You need @RobSmithDev modded WinUAE:

https://amiga.robsmithdev.co.uk/

Instructions should be on site.