Using HD PC floppy drive on the H5

[olivier.jan]

I want to install an ALPS DF354 inside my H5C1B, and I was going to do the mods on the drive when I checked the H5 schematics:

- HD SEL is properly routed to pin 2 of the connector, so no need to run a wire from the drive to the mother board ?
- Drive0, Drive1 and Drive 2 are all connected together on the motherboard: I don't need to change DS1 to DS0 on the drive ?

If both are true, so it means I just need to install the drive without modification ? (I have the proper GAL installed to do HD).

Another question: How can I make the ST recognize HD ? On my Mega STE there's a dip-switch on the motherboard and TOS 2.06 recognizes it and proposes HD options, is there a way to do the same on the Phoenix ?

[exxos]

I think I did try with the ALPS drive a while ago and was fine, but what the drive output something to I really don't know I never looked into it properly.. The H5 logic assumes a connection to the HD select switch on the drive itself. So you need to follow the SONY instructions really.

There is a HD patch for TOS somewhere. It was talked about a while ago but all it really does is enable the HD format option in GEM desktop. It really would be better just to use something like FCOPYIII anyway..

Found the guide I wrote..

viewtopic.php?p=2695#p2695

[Darklord]

Another question: How can I make the ST recognize HD ? On my Mega STE there's a dip-switch on the motherboard and TOS 2.06 recognizes it and proposes HD options, is there a way to do the same on the Phoenix ?

I use a small AUTO folder program from this ZIP file to get TOS v3.06 in my STacy
to show the HD formatting option for my 1.44m HD floppy drive. HTH's. :)

ELCO_HD.ZIP

[olivier.jan]

Thanks a lot @Darklord.
I gave it a try this morning and it works fine. I also tried HD_COOKIE (from this post: viewtopic.php?p=85717#p85717) and it also works perfectly, I can read/write and format both 1.44M and 720k floppies seamlessly.

So I confirm from my previous posts that there is no need to change DS1 to DS0 on an H5 as both are connected together on the motherboard.
For the HDSEL signal, I suspect it would work also directly if the drive presents it on its Pin #2, but that's not the case of my ALPS drive, so I had to solder a wire as per @exxos post on the topic and plug-it to JP18's pin with a star.

Thanks again to everyone, I have finally put the H5 in a proper case and printed a new "Atari" faceplate for the ALPS drive, so no need to cut the case.

[exxos]

I asked AI if it could write a program to enable the TOS206 HD format option...

IMG_4982.JPG

:girldance: :girldance:

HDFLOP.zip

EDIT:

AI figured out how to speed up formatting as well. With the ST536, ROM is held in RAM, so simply to patch. So formatting a 720k took 1.40mins, then after a PRG patch, took 1.08mins. So that's a fair bit faster ! But the slowness is because TOS does a verify after each write. Takes ages, but likely better to have it there anyway.