External Floppy Drive Connector

[ijor]

These are my notes from 30 years ago :lol: may help...

Do you still have the actual paper and, you found it that easily !? :shock: ... Or it is just an old picture ?

[exxos]

]
Do you still have the actual paper and, you found it that easily !? :shock: ... Or it is just an old picture ?

Yep. In my old Atari folder on top of my wardrobe. Had lots of vintage dust as well.

[BrettRogersUK]

Hi Guys, thanks for all your help.

I think I'm just having a brain fart moment but I can't get my head round this.

When looking at the front of the din plug (pin side) in which order do the pins go in? Is pin 4 on the left or right of the plug? Do the even numbers go on the left or right of the plug?

If they go on the left (looking at the din plug from the pin side NOT solder side) then I HAVE wired my cable correct. Unfortunately my the part where the pins go isn't numbered either front or solder side.

All I have to go on is the piece of paper saying which colour wire goes to which pin. I know it shouldn't be this difficult. If I've done it right then @rubber_jonnie I apologise and your tutorial is bang on Correct.

[exxos]

I don't know the numbering on the connector off-hand, but it really does not matter. You just match the location on the DIN to the Floppy connector.

In my drawing I would have (presumably) done the numbering from the solder side. Looks like I listed the ribbon connector from both sides anyway. So you can easily match the locations from what RJ did in his guide.

I rotated RJ's image so it matches my orientation. I just marked one in yellow. As you can see my pinout to RJ's matches.. Numbering is completely different but it is irrelevant really.

I don't have time unfortunately to go through every single pin but this should at least give you a start for checking things out.

20220920_011210.jpg

rj.jpg

[BrettRogersUK]

Hi Guys,

I can finally confirm that the cable DOES actually work, I have checked each pin, buzzed it out plugged it in and it works. I plugged it into the Gotek that's currently internal, flipped the switch and it loads things off my Gotek. @rubber_jonnie I do sincerely apologise!

One thing I cannot do is load things from floppy disk. I wanted to use my Epson SMD-380 (I removed this when I put my Gotek in (before I learned I could make my own external floppy drive cable)) as the external drive but it doesn't look like I'm gonna be able to do that. I've tried moving the jumper on the back of it but to no avail. I can put a disk in, click on the drive letter but that's as far as it gets.

It tries to access the disc but comes up with the usual error saying it couldn't find a disc. Plugging the floppy drive back to the internal drive it works as expected (as it does from factory) it loads the disc.

Is there anything else I can try? I have a Samsung floppy drive I took out of an old PC, but I plugged it in and I don't get any life from that at all, not even a drive access light.

Regards,

Brett

EDIT: Could it be a power problem? I'm powering the drive with a 5v 1A USB plug. Do you think I could do with another kind of power supply to supply power to the floppy drive?

EDIT 2: It's not a power issue, I used my bench power supply set to 5v and 1A. Still the same issue. Double click the disk icon, can hear the motor kick in, then it comes up saying its unresponsive as usual. If I put the floppy drive back in the STE on the internal drive it works perfectly. Just doesn't work on the external floppy cable. Gotek works externally on the cable.

[satjanand]

Hi, did you ever solve this? I've encountered a similar issue with my STe today, and found this discussion when looking for a solution.

I have a 1040 STe with an A/B switch. Switch works fine when I connect a floppy drive externally and switch it to work as drive A.

When I connect a gotek to the external fdd port, and switch it to work as drive A, it only reads 1 track then halts. I tried 3 goteks, all confirmed working in other machines. None will work from the external port.

Trying with goteks to the external fdd port switched to work as drive B, I can access the file list in TOS. Just nothing runs, TOS tells me the drive is not responding when I access a file.

Here's what I've done with the machine:

- A/B switch
- EPROM TOS 2.06 upgrade w/ jumper pins soldered to W102/103/104
- Replaced the 4700uF/16V bulk capacitor
- Exxo's M68HC000 CPU
- 4MB RAM

So I'm thinking of building the gotek in the machine and use an fdd on the external port. But just wondering what could be the reason for this behaviour.

[BrettRogersUK]

Hi,

Yeah, I can't really remember what was the problem. I think it was a power supply issue as I was using an external power supply.

I also remember removing a jumper from the gotek leave just the S0 jumper selected. Not sure if that made things work or not.

That's all I can remember. Sorry its a bit vague.

Regards,

Brett