1.44 floppy mod Assembly guide?

[Darklord]

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 :)

Good thinking, but yeah, it doesn't apply here.

Thanks though. :)

[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 :)

Good thinking, but yeah, it doesn't apply here.

Thanks though. :)

Worth a try I guess.

[Darklord]

Worth a try I guess.

Absolutely. At this point I'm welcome to any and all radical, out of the box, out of left field ideas. :lol:

It's crazy how close the tolerances on this is. With the floppy drive setting in it's place on top of the cage,
and the internal US in place, it works fine. Put all 4 screws in the floppy drive, bang! stops working. I've
looked at everything that might be in the way or constricted, but it all comes down to the height of the
1.44 HD mod PCB and how the internal US presses on it when everything is installed. With the screws on
the floppy drive out, you can see the holes and the alignment is just the smallest bit off, but apparently
that's all it takes.

I'm adjusting my internal Ultrasatan 3D printed faceplate again, will give it a go later on. We'll see
how it goes.

[rubber_jonnie]

Worth a try I guess.

Absolutely. At this point I'm welcome to any and all radical, out of the box, out of left field ideas. :lol:

It's crazy how close the tolerances on this is. With the floppy drive setting in it's place on top of the cage,
and the internal US in place, it works fine. Put all 4 screws in the floppy drive, bang! stops working. I've
looked at everything that might be in the way or constricted, but it all comes down to the height of the
1.44 HD mod PCB and how the internal US presses on it when everything is installed. With the screws on
the floppy drive out, you can see the holes and the alignment is just the smallest bit off, but apparently
that's all it takes.

I'm adjusting my internal Ultrasatan 3D printed faceplate again, will give it a go later on. We'll see
how it goes.

I had an issue not unlike this with an Amstrad Alt-386 laptop, open on the bench it would work fine, reassembled it was a nope. It turned out to be faulty contacts on the PSU connector that broke contact whenever the case was closed.

Could you have something similar going on with a cable?

[Darklord]

I had an issue not unlike this with an Amstrad Alt-386 laptop, open on the bench it would work fine, reassembled it was a nope. It turned out to be faulty contacts on the PSU connector that broke contact whenever the case was closed.

Could you have something similar going on with a cable?

I suppose anything is possible at this point (even Gremlins!?). I replaced the original internal power supply with an 80w Pico,
but honestly, that part of the upgrade(s) I've been doing went relatively smoothly.

Ah-oh...that might be a sure-fire indication that I need to go back and double, nay triple! check it. :lol:

[rubber_jonnie]

I had an issue not unlike this with an Amstrad Alt-386 laptop, open on the bench it would work fine, reassembled it was a nope. It turned out to be faulty contacts on the PSU connector that broke contact whenever the case was closed.

Could you have something similar going on with a cable?

I suppose anything is possible at this point (even Gremlins!?). I replaced the original internal power supply with an 80w Pico,
but honestly, that part of the upgrade(s) I've been doing went relatively smoothly.

Ah-oh...that might be a sure-fire indication that I need to go back and double, nay triple! check it. :lol:

No harm in triple checking :)

[Darklord]

Okay, I finally caved in and tore the entire thing down to "bare metal", as the saying goes.

I removed all the drives, cables, connectors, etc from the drive cage and started over,
hopefully with better cable management and layout.

It turns out, I was on the wrong trail all along. The problem had nothing to do with the
1.44 HD floppy PCB. Honestly, I always thought it was strange that pushing down on it
(it's socketed, after all) made it stop working. What threw me off was that half the time
I was getting the damage drive A message and the other half it would read 1.44 floppies
but not 720k ones. Going from that I assumed it had to be something to do with the
1.44 mod.

It wasn't pressure going *down* - it was pressure going *up*, into the floppy drive itself.
I realized this after I took everything apart and began reassembling it. I was finally able
to see exactly what was what and it became evident that the 1.44 HD PCB wasn't being
pressed against at all. Same for any associated cable, connectors or wires. As soon as
I arrived at this point, with a little more investigation, it became obvious that the
internal Ultrasatan, and it's height, was the heart of the problem. That's why whenever
I took the floppy drive screws loose, or moved the drive out of the cage, but still being
connected, everything would still work.

I dropped all the way back to the first generation (well, first one I ever had) Ultrasatan
and used it. It seems to work fine. Here are some pictures showing some models of the
Internal Ultrasatan and how it's changed.

First is the 3rd generation (I'm guessing), marked as "Ultrasatan 2k23". It's the one I've
been banging my head against the wall, trying to get it to work. The red arrows point
to the problem - it's just too tall now for what I need:

3rd_gen-B.JPG

Next is the 2nd generation (marked as v1.2) and it's what I have in my Mega STe.
Notice how much flatter it is then the one above? I didn't feel like pulling the one
out of my Mega STe to try it and besides, I don't have a 3D printed face plate to
match for the STacy. I'm thinking it might have worked though (maybe):

2nd_gen.JPG

and finally, here is what I got to work. It's the original model that I bought years
ago. It's actually not an internal model, I just made it into one. Notice how much
smaller it is than the models above. It doesn't mount the 2 SD-cards side by side,
but rather stacks them vertically:

1st_gen.png

Here is an open ended view of it mounted in the STacy's drive bay. You can see how
much smaller it is. I custom made a face plate for it, using the original cover.

My Setup.jpg

So where do I go from here? I'm thinking I might grab one of the 2nd generation
models (RetroLemon still sells them at the moment), get a 3D printed face plate
to match, and try it to see if it will work. For now though, I've got a working
setup, which means a lot to me.

[Hellraiseruk]

Good work! I'd definitely pull the v2 from the mega ste to test before you spend money on buying another v2 though, maybe that's because I'm averse to spending money unnecessarily (though having just moved house, I am getting very used to spending large amounts of money that I don't want to :twisted:

JD

[Darklord]

Good work! I'd definitely pull the v2 from the mega ste to test before you spend money on buying another v2 though, maybe that's because I'm averse to spending money unnecessarily (though having just moved house, I am getting very used to spending large amounts of money that I don't want to :twisted:

JD

Yeah, honestly that would be the way to go. It's not that hard to pull it from the Mega STe - 4 screws
and 2 connectors. I just don't have a face plate for it for use with the STacy at the moment. Still, I
can probably improvise and given how many times I've taken things apart on the STacy it's not that
big of a leap.

I am curious though, as to why each successive generation of the internal Ultrasatan has gotten bigger?

[Darklord]

I can't remember if this was answered somewhere else so if it was, apologies.

Will one of the 1.44 HD floppy mechs from a Falcon, Mega STe or TT work
with the 1.44 floppy drive mod for the ST's?

Thanks.