exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

:dualthumbup:

And let there be light:


So the inverter is good, all I need to do now is put it all back together :)

And all reassembled:


Not the brightest display in the world, but way better than it was that's for sure and workable. The brightness control doesn't do an awful lot, however contrast works really well and the invert switch works fine.

Just need to figure out a PSU now as running by direct connection to the battery terminals ATM, which also may affect brightness if it thinks it's on battery,

Well done. Nearly there then. :D

mrbombermillzy wrote: 08 May 2026 14:42 Well done. Nearly there then. :D

Yeah, I think the FDD may need a new belt too, it's not reading, though the head is moving I just don't hear the disk spinning. I 'may' have a PSU that will work from another machine, but I need to figure out the power connections first.

Oh, and the CMOS battery is toast...

On a positive note I found power settings for the display in the BIOS and set them to High and the display is brighter now.

Slowly inching closer.

Yay!

Once you get the bespoke things such as the display sorted then it's generally a down hill run.

stephen_usher wrote: 08 May 2026 18:17 Yay!

Once you get the bespoke things such as the display sorted then it's generally a down hill run.

Indeed.

I have to say I am very impressed with backlightweb.co.uk, the packaging for the CCFL was just brilliant and the price was really good. It looks even better since turning up the display power in the BIOS.

I got the FDD out just before I went out to karate and the belt 'seems' ok, not disintegrating, but it had stuck to the motor pulley. I'm going to try and clean the pulley and reinstall, see where it gets me.

I do need to try and get the CMOS battery out because it's supposedly a NiCD, but I am wondering if in actuality the main NiCD is used to keep the bios settings as I don't see any kind of battery on board at the moment.

:girldance:

Well good news :)

The drive belt seemed in good condition, and I wondered if it had actually been replaced already. So I cleaned up the motor, idler and drive pulleys and put it all back together, and it works great :)


I can now do any file operations with 720KB and 1.44Mb floppies :)

I've worked on a few of these Citizen FDDs and I think I have the measure of them now :)

So next I need to focus on the PSU, it takes 5.25v for the main power and 6v (Or is it 6.5v?) for charging the battery pack, but I need to figure out which pin is which on the socket, the other being GND, which should be relatively easy to find.

To quote an X-wing pilot from Star Wars: 'Almost there..' :D