exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Strange.

stephen_usher wrote: 20 Sep 2021 15:19Strange.

Yes, rather.

However I have moved on a bit. The machine that gives the DMA port 'PASS' result works fine with the US now I have swapped over to PPs driver, and in fact all 3 of the suspect DMA's do in fact work just fine with it, including copying files between FDD and HDD.

What is slightly more annoying is that My H4 board won't boot from the external ACSI port, and it also complains that the DMA port is faulty. GRRR

So that now needs a check over, though when I can work out which ACSI pin is which on the internal header, I will see what happens there.

H4 is now working and giving a DMA port test pass result. The buffer board next to the DMA looked to be ok, but was not fully seated. Phew, just need to hook up a floppy and test the US and FDD together. I'm sure they'll be fine.

EDIT: H4 is now all working with both FDD and HDD. Phew.

So it isn't necessarily a bad DMA in the new machine then, it seems that cross checking the test harness across machines was the thing to do. Better get my diagnosing hat on now I know the DMA is good.

Ok, so good progress tonight.

On the DMA port connector, socket 18, had somehow been pushed back into the socket (Another under-engineered masterpiece that socket!) I managed to get to the socket from the back and push it back into place, and lo and behold, the DMA port test is now good.

I then tested the floppy and it was pretty erratic, and at that point I decided to replace the FDD cable with a proper socket and new cable, after which it worked with a known good FDD. So the mainboard is good, and on booting with the Ultrasatan, everything works fine, including copying files to/from the FDD to the HDD and vice versa.

But dropping in the original big button drive was where it all went wrong. The drive is erratic, sometimes working, sometimes not, so I'm going to re-cap it and see what's what. I'll give it a light lube while I'm at it and clean all the ribbon cable fittings where they plug into the board. I feel it's so close, but even cleaning the heads made no difference.

Happy that the mainboard is good though, that's always a win, especially when I was originally expecting it had bad DMA and/or WD1772. Annoying the FDD is right as the old big button drives are not so easy to get a hold of now.

What is it with me and faulty FDDs at the moment!!

FDDs are just getting old and tetchy. Remember that this kit had a design life of maybe up to 5 years at most and it’s now six or seven times that.

stephen_usher wrote: 23 Sep 2021 06:08 FDDs are just getting old and tetchy. Remember that this kit had a design life of maybe up to 5 years at most and it’s now six or seven times that.

Yeah, I know, just annoying as it's a big button drive.

Indeed. It's worse if it's the Chinon special big button drive in the SF314 though. :-)

stephen_usher wrote: 23 Sep 2021 09:33 Indeed. It's worse if it's the Chinon special big button drive in the SF314 though. :-)

Maybe time for a big button GoEX :)

rubber_jonnie wrote: 23 Sep 2021 09:42

stephen_usher wrote: 23 Sep 2021 09:33 Indeed. It's worse if it's the Chinon special big button drive in the SF314 though. :-)

Maybe time for a big button GoEX :)

Hehe. They don't fit in the external drive caddy as it's a half-height drive. It also has a completely different cable. I had to make a converter cable to shoehorn a "standard" long button drive into mine.

stephen_usher wrote: 23 Sep 2021 09:50

rubber_jonnie wrote: 23 Sep 2021 09:42

Maybe time for a big button GoEX :)

Hehe. They don't fit in the external drive caddy as it's a half-height drive. It also has a completely different cable. I had to make a converter cable to shoehorn a "standard" long button drive into mine.

Ahh, I'm with you now, my Chinon is quite tall compared to normal drives I have to say. I don't have an SF314 and didn't realise the cable differences.