BennehBoy's Bobbins

[BennehBoy]

It's probably about time I started up a thread, I've been wittering on for a little while in this 1541 thread -> https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/forum/viewt ... =44&t=4356

I've got various other bit and bobs (bobbins!) showing up soon so will prattle on here.

Those things are:

A batch of SpeedDOS adapter PCB's - these are so I can make GCR level backups of original game disks.
A faulty Commodore 128
A Replacement spindle motor for one of my 1541's - so I'll have 3 in working condition, with various mods.
A 1571 disk drive (which I'll fit a parallel adapter to), for use with the C128.

I also just missed out on a Plus 4 & 1551 disk drive, seller ended the listing prematurely - I hate it when they do that!

Hoping to not go too nuts, I don't want to approach rubber_jonnie territory So I'm hoping to just pick up a few of the machines I used as a kid/teen - Vic20, (c64 I have), C128, plus4, speccy, and probably a 2600VCS. I've also got an A600 & A500. I'm under orders not to outgrow this large drawer:

PXL_20220122_123514983.jpg (282.49 KiB) Viewed 4728 times

But what she doesn't know won't hurt me

[BennehBoy]

SpeedDOS adapters arrived from PCBWay, I ordered 10, can't imagine I'll ever use them all so if anyone fancies one let me know.

I'll get one made up this evening - assuming I can find the 10 pin connectors in all my bits.

PXL_20220125_182937849.jpg (396.35 KiB) Viewed 4669 times

[BennehBoy]

I found some time to build the adapter, install & test it.

Unfortunately I couldn't find my IDC connectors so I decided to simply solder the wires to the board - it's not like I need to be able to disconnect it:

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Fitted the completed adapter to the drive with a stock ROM, just to prove that I hadn't fried anything.

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A directory & status test (using JiffyDOS ROM C64 side) showed comms was working down the serial line:

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I then inserted a SpeedDOS rom into the drive & tried the same tests:

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Oops, something wrong there, the status line is garbled - at this point I suspected my soldering so using the connection guide on the adapter silkscreen I toned out all the wires end to end (from pin legs to C64 USER port end), this showed that the orange wire was open circuit. A quick inspection of the ribbon showed that it was probably bad where it had been folded in the Parallel port plug:

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I did a quick hack to reconnect the orange wire from prior to this visual defect, and retested:

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And all is now working!

Unfortunately, my Zoomfloppy still fails to allow me to transfer via parallel using this drive & adapter instead of dolphin dos 2 (which also didn't work). Suspecting the cable length I trimmed things down to 1 metre (as suggested), with no improvement.

Next test will be burning the stock SpeedDOS 2.7 ROM instead of 2.7+ (which has 40 track support), Zoomfloppy, opencbm, & nibtools are very picky about what they will work with.

[exxos]

[BennehBoy]

So nibtools is now working, looks like the VIA chip had a duff port - the one that speedDOS utilises is not used on the stock 1541, so I swapped in another chip and all is now good! wh00p.

Code: Select all

PS D:\> nibread -D9 EX.nib

nibread - Commodore 1541/1571 disk image nibbler
(C) Peter Rittwage
http://c64preservation.com
Built Sep 13 2021 22:11:54

* Use Device 9

Drive Version: 73,SPEEDDOS 2.7 MR.Z,00,00
Drive type: 1541
Bumping...
Initializing
Sending 1541 parallel support code...
Uploading floppy-side code ($03ad bytes, $300-$6ad)...done.
Starting custom drive code...Started!
Testing communication...done.
Passed basic communication test.


18.0: (2)
Cosmetic Disk ID: 'AE'
Format Disk ID: 'AE'


 1.0: (3) 7779 [CBM OK]
 2.0: (3) 7829 [CBM OK]
 3.0: (3) 7789 [E2S16]
      (3) 7788 [CBM OK]
 4.0: (3) 7782 [CBM OK] (weakgcr:1)
 5.0: (3) 7786 [CBM OK]
 6.0: (3) 7786 [CBM OK]
 7.0: (3) 7783 [CBM OK]
 8.0: (3) 7792 [CBM OK]
 9.0: (3) 7784 [CBM OK]
10.0: (3) 7792 [CBM OK]
11.0: (3) 7788 [CBM OK]
12.0: (3) 7787 [CBM OK]
13.0: (3) 7781 [CBM OK]
14.0: (3) 7780 [CBM OK]
15.0: (3) 7790 [CBM OK]
16.0: (3) 7786 [CBM OK]
17.0: (3) 7785 [CBM OK]
18.0: (2) 6942 [CBM OK] (weakgcr:1)
19.0: (2) 6950 [CBM OK]
20.0: (2) 6936 [CBM OK]
21.0: (2) 6965 [CBM OK]
22.0: (2) 6945 [E5S10]
      (2) 6944 [E5S10]
      (2) 6945 [E5S10]
      (2) 6949 [E5S10]
      (2) 6948 [E5S10]
      (2) 6946 [E5S10]
      (2) 6950 [E5S10]
      (2) 6943 [E5S10]
      (2) 6950 [E5S10]
      (2) 6945 [E5S10]
      (2) 6946 [E5S10]
23.0: (2) 6949 [CBM OK]
24.0: (2) 6950 [CBM OK]
25.0: (1) 6563 [CBM OK]
26.0: (1) 6564 [CBM OK]
27.0: (1) 6567 [CBM OK]
28.0: (1) 6568 [CBM OK]
29.0: (1) 6565 [CBM OK]
30.0: (1) 6549 [CBM OK]
31.0: (0) 6219 [CBM OK]
32.0: (0) 6228 [CBM OK]
33.0: (0) 6229 [CBM OK]
34.0: (0) 6227 [CBM OK]
35.0: (0) 6222 [CBM OK]
36.0: (1!=0) 7750 Long Read! [NDOS]
      (1!=0) 6571 [NDOS]  (weakgcr:5224)
37.0: (1!=0 NOSYNC!) 0 [Unformatted Track]
38.0: (1!=0 NOSYNC!) 0 [Unformatted Track]
39.0: (1!=0 NOSYNC!) 0 [Unformatted Track]
40.0: (1!=0 NOSYNC!) 0 [Unformatted Track]
41.0: (1!=0 NOSYNC!) 0 [Unformatted Track]
Converting to NIB format...
Successfully parsed data to NIB format
Successfully saved file EX.nib

Resetting drive...
Cleaning up...

[BennehBoy]

And here's the disk image created being used in VICE.

vice.jpg (32.79 KiB) Viewed 4605 times

[stephen_usher]

What?! No Tic-Tac-Toe and "Global Thermonuclear War" options?

[BennehBoy]

What?! No Tic-Tac-Toe and "Global Thermonuclear War" options?

Those are in the 6000+ strong d64 collection that I have. I'm just archiving the physical media that I have for the moment - and more importantly, I've got some original games disks that no longer work, I want to write out new disks including the original copy protection over the top of that media to see if they can be resurrected. Geeky yeah, Nostalic yeah, but fun

[BennehBoy]

I did a bit of Dremel surgery on the 1541 stepper motor adjustment lugs tonight.

As the drives age, the mechanics stretch a bit which means the head goes out of alignment on the track boundaries, this is usually corrected by loosening 2 securing bolts and minutely rotating the stepper motor - all whilst observing the alignment using a diagnostic utility. My drive was 1 complete track out, this isn't an issue for normal disks, but almost every copy protected game will fail to load.

Unfortunately even with the stepper fully rotated (there are slotted holes that the 2 screws fit through), the alignment was still bad.

I've had one attack session and now can load most games, but it's still not bob on so will be hitting it up again. I'll post some photos later.

[BennehBoy]

Well, the dremel job didn't really improve things, I suspect the collet on the spindle may be slipping slightly. I've found some new old stock stepper motors for a tenner a pop so will swap one of those in when they arrive.

I also snagged a still sealed copy of the Free Spirit Drive Alignment software, it comes with a special disk that makes checking alignment much easier.

And to continue the nostalgia kick, I bought a C128 from Italy, got it cheaper than faulty ones go for here - I really learned to program on that machine, both in BASIC & assembly language. Me and my mate who had 'Trilogic Expert' cartridges would rip multipart games from tape to disk based on where the inbuilt loader would whack the data in memory. Happy days. I've a bit of a wait for it to arrive but will deffo be posting about it here, and doing some mods of course