1.44 floppy mod Assembly guide?

[Darklord]

Thanks for all the helpful suggestions. I've not had a chance to continue with this yet.

BTW, I've been using one of those "Weller" soldering models:

Capture.JPG

Hopefully later today or tomorrow I can work on this some more...

[Darklord]

@Exxos:

Just wondering, in the interest of narrowing things down, can I use
the P/S pass through on the flippy board to power a 1.44 HD floppy
drive thus checking it and the 1.44 HD floppy mod without involving
the rest of the board itself? I'd then have to flip the cable to the
1.44 drive of course.

That way I could isolate whether my issue is with the flippy board or
the 1.44 mod itself, if possible.

Thanks.

[Darklord]

I reflowed the solder joints on the flippy board, but it didn't make any difference.

So I pulled the flippy board, just leaving the P/S plugged into the 1.44 floppy drive
mech and manually flipped the FD cable and tried it that way. It works, as you can
see below:

20240814_143537.jpg

It's also reading 720k disks correctly:

20240814_143727.jpg

Although the desktop formatter option doesn't show HD. I thought it was supposed to?

20240814_143630.jpg

So with the 1.44 mod obviously working and ruled out, that leaves the flippy board and
whatever I screwed up on it. I'll go back and check all my connections again to see if I
can find what I muffed up...

[Darklord]

Okay, I went back and reflowed the joints again, then cleaned everything
up really good and...it seems to be working. At least for now. :)

I'll check it periodically over the next few days to make sure it's stable.

You can see the board in place and working below:

STacy Flippy FD Cable Board.JPG

[Darklord]

One thing though, for whatever reason, I'm still not getting the High Density format option
from the drop-down desktop menu.

Anyone have any idea why that would be? It's TOS v3.06 and it did show that with the old
1.44 HD floppy setup I originally had in place.

It's nothing critical, the Formatter CPX will do the job, I'm just curious about it.

Thanks all.

[Darklord]

Okay, things seem to be mostly stable with the 1.44 HD floppy mod and "flippy" board.

I would highly recommend to anyone that decides to do this same mod for a STacy to
make one change.

If I had to do it again, I would leave the socket off for the 1.44 HD mod PCB and just
solder the WD1772 directly to it. I started to remove the socket and do it anyway.

Why? Because there's really not enough space between the hard drive (or Ultrasatan)
in the floppy/hard drive cage/cradle and the 1.44 HD mod PCB with the arrangement
of the chips on the STacy motherboard.

You can see what I'm talking about in the picture below.

20240811_153914b.jpg

[Darklord]

Oh, just wanted to mention one other thing. I found the software that comes with the
Elco HD 1.44 floppy drive mod. In the archive it has a small AUTO folder program that
enables the high density format option from the drop down menu in TOS. Here's a picture
of it working on my STacy. I'll attach the ZIP file for it as well.

I think at this point I can (dare I tempt fate!?) say that I'm done with this upgrade. :)

PS Thanks as always everyone, for all the help.

20240823_001830.jpg

ELCO_HD.ZIP

[Darklord]

I suppose one should never say they are done, or finished. :)

I'm going to have to throw the towel in on this one, at least as
far as my STacy goes.

Not because it isn't working - it is, it's a great mod/upgrade.

However, at the end of the day, I can't figure out how to put it
in my STacy because of space limitations.

The way the STacy's MB is, the 1.44 HD PCB and chips sit rather
sandwiched over top of 2 other chips. Then, the FD/HD cage
sits on top of that, so there's the hard drive (or replacement like
my internal Ultrasatan) and the floppy drive on top of that, and
finally the top half of the STacy's case clamps down over all of
that.

What's happening is that when I put all that together, something
is getting squeezed and it quits working. Either it loses the ability
to read 720k disks (but still reads 1.44m disks) or it gives one of
those errors where it says the disk can't be read. As soon as I
unscrew everything, it happily resumes working.

I double checked the FDC ribbon cable, swapping it out for others,
as well as trying different floppy disks, just to make sure I wasn't
reaching my conclusion on other issues.

If there was a fully integrated PCB, it *might* work. Maybe. It
would have been nice to have this in place on my STacy, just
to be able to say I had it :) but with easily exchangeable mass
storage like the SD-cards the internal Ultrasatan uses, it is a bit
superfluous, I suppose. <shrugs>

Thanks to everyone who helped when I was floundering through
this. :)

[Darklord]

Okay, drastic times call for drastic measures, right? :)

So I completely removed 1/4 of the frame on the 3D printed Ultrasatan faceplate I'm using,
in an attempt to clear any contact pressure between it and the 1.44 HD floppy mod PCB.

It's fine for support still - there's still 3 screws/nuts holding the US in and it's still rigid. I
mean, considering there's no right or left, up or down force on it (only pressure from
inserting or removing a SD-card), it should be fine.

Cue mental image of tiny engineers running around inside my STacy screaming, "We've
lost structural integrity!". :lol:

Anyway, I'm going to play around with this and see if it resolves my problem. If not, as
a last resort, I suppose I could order another kit and solder everything together without
using any sockets, to achieve as low a profile as possible.

Here's a picture of my murdere....er modified US faceplate:

Atari STacy - Ultrasatan Faceplate (modified).JPG

[rubber_jonnie]

Not sure if the STacy is the same, but the STE has a block of jumpers and one need to be set to enable HD floppies in TOS format menu.

If this is irrelevant, please ignore :)