exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

LarryL wrote: 05 Mar 2024 08:41 looking at the photos 133134, 133209 and 133218 I am not sure, if the solder jumpers at the adapter are set right - if they are set at all???

The jumper pads are indeed unconnected.

Here's what I found out before I accidentally ripped some of them off: The top one is for connecting the flat cable's Drive Select 2 (pin 14) to either Drive A or Drive B Select on the ST. The bottom one is for connecting the flat cable's Drive Select 0 to either Motor On or Drive A Select on the ST.

A picture on the original offer's site for helping you set it up says you should leave the top three contacts unconnected and connect the center bottom pad with the bottom right pad if using a DS0 configured drive and a straight cable. This is connecting the floppy's DS0 to the ST's Drive A Select.

Since the bottom center pad is ripped off, I made that connection manually with the green wire you can see on the photos.

Also, the disk images are all valid, I even enabled forced write protect on the Gotek to avoid corruption. I can also switch between them normally. The Gotek is also probably not the problem, as the other one I have behaves the same when connected to the ST. And it works fine in my Amiga.

Noah199 wrote: 05 Mar 2024 14:40 Also, the disk images are all valid, I even enabled forced write protect on the Gotek to avoid corruption. I can also switch between them normally. The Gotek is also probably not the problem, as the other one I have behaves the same when connected to the ST. And it works fine in my Amiga.

This seems to rule out the Gotek being the problem, indeed. Let's hope it's the adapter.

Seeing this thread inspired me to do something that I had been putting off for a long time, namely fixing up an external Gotek for my 520ST which isn't suitable for most of the Atari games adapted games on my Ultrasatan because few of them work with just 512K of RAM. One that comes to mind that does work is Ultima IV, but I cant think of another one. I saw the same adapter kit on ebay, but I often look for other sources because it is common that I cant buy things on ebay or they wont deliver to my part of the world. Often you can buy ready made hardware for not much more than a kit you have to assemble yourself. I bought this cable and it seems to work fine either as an A drive or a B drive. If what you are looking for is something that works more than the fun of assembling things yourself it is a good idea to look for alternatives.

So, it's been a while, but I finally fixed it. I had put the project on hold for about a month because I got a bit demotivated, but after that, I decided, that it could really only be either the DMA or the FDC, so I bought one of each. When they arrived, I first swapped the DMA, since it was socketed from the factory, but it still didn't work. Then I desoldered the FDC, put a socket in it's place and installed the new one, lo and behold, this actually worked. Thanks everyone who replied here for helping me figure this out, you're all amazing.

Some pictures of the chips, and of course, the end product:

Well done. Got there in the end. Sounds like perhaps something did go wrong with that adapter at some point.

BW