exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Hi there!

I bought HD V7 and SONY drive (shop items: 0037 and 0041). I have 1040STE, AJAX (C302434) chip and TOS 2,06PL.

What I did:

• at drive board: additional cable from HD sensor and changed D1->D0 drive selector according to online instruction,
• assembly HD board and placed AJAX chip on it. I didn't remove AJAX socket from mainboard, I prefer to cut a part of floppy drive envelope. It fits.
• connections - P1 connected to W301 pin 1, P2 connected to W301 pin 2, D0 connected to floppy drive HD sensor.

I hope I didn't mix anything?

So, it's possible to read HD disks (PC format) but it also generates errors like no disk or datas are corrupted. It is not possible to read desktop INF file during boot. It's not possible to format HD disk - all floppies are formatted in DD.

What am I doing wrong or should it work like this?

Should be working, there's not much to fitting it. Maybe post a image of it all...

Also check with a meter on voltage, insert a DD disk and take it out and see if the voltage on that wire changes. 0v would be DD, 5V will be HD IIRC.

Might I make a suggestion?

Does the Sony drive work as a DD drive without the upgrade fitted? If so that's a good place to start, but before fitting anything like this you should verify the drive first.

There is a step you need to do in order for TOS to be able to format in HD, and that is to solder a jumper on one of the row of pads, E6, and you haven't mentioned that.

Until you do this, the menu item will be disabled.

@exxos:

I checked voltages:
- no disc: 5V,
- DD: 0V,
- HD: 5V.

And photo of assembled board:


@rubber_jonnie:

"Does the Sony drive work as a DD drive without the upgrade fitted?" - I do not know, I bought it at exxos's shop.

"There is a step you need to do in order for TOS to be able to format in HD, and that is to solder a jumper on one of the row of pads, E6, and you haven't mentioned that." - I didn't mention, because I haven't done it. This is next step, I will write results.

I assume you put the drive select jumper over on the drives PCB ? Also there is a small mod to change those 2 1K resistors to 470R.

@exxos

Yes, I put drive select jumper on the drive's PCB to D0.
Which 1K resistors should I change to 470R? At the moment all 4 resistors are 1K.

@rubber_jonnie

I solder over E6 jumper - now it's possible to format in HD. Thanks!

@AdamSTE

Can you remove the upgrade board? Is it in a socket?

If so I'd suggest you drop the Ajax in as though it was a normal and just try running the FDD as a 720KB DD drive.

That way it eliminates the STE mainboard and FDD itself.

Once you know it works 'as normal', then you can put the upgrade back in and start to troubleshoot.

If you don't know if the standard floppy operations work fine, then fitting the HD upgrade might layer one problem on top of another, which is why you need to change one thing at a time and verify function before moving onto the next step.

BTW, the E6 jumper just needs to be bridged, and only enables the HDD format option in the menu, it makes no other HW changes, so you can do that regardless of the HD upgrade being fitted.

AdamSTE wrote: 13 Jun 2021 14:56
@rubber_jonnie

I solder over E6 jumper - now it's possible to format in HD. Thanks!

No problem.

AdamSTE wrote: 13 Jun 2021 14:56 Which 1K resistors should I change to 470R? At the moment all 4 resistors...

Its the 2x 1K resistors next to the ajax.

@exxos

I changed resitors. All seems to work proper at the moment.
Either DD and HD floppies are able to boot or read desktop INF file. It also formats HD proper, it's possible to read it at PC.
Thank you very much, I think that's all in this topic ;)