exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Hi All,

As You may have seen from my previous thread I have managed to build myself a external floppy drive cable. While the cable does work with a gotek attached externally, Ideally I would like a floppy disk on the external cable as I already have a Gotek internally.

I had thought about using the drive I took out of my Atari which is an Epson SMD-380. I had the drive swap mod done by @rubber_jonnie and it does work. However, I cannot get a disk to read in the drive when connected tot he external floppy cable.

I can click on the disk icon, I can hear the motor start but it doesn't read the disk. Says that it is unresponsive and to retry again. I know the floppy drive works as I can use it on my greaseweazle and also it works as normal when connected to the internal floppy cable.

I have tried moving the jumper on the back of the floppy drive from 0 to 1 even to 2 and 3 with nothing happening. I have connected a drive that I took out of a PC (Samsung make) and I cant get disks to read in that either.

On my Gotek the jumpers are set as MO and S0. There is some debate as to weather to use the MO jumper or not. My Gotek will refuse to work if I don't have the MO jumper set as well as the S0 jumper.

Is there anything else I can try?

Thanks in Advance.

Brett

Have you tried only using one drive at once.IE when using the external, don't use a internal drive.

On your previous thread you mentioned only a 5V power supply to the external drive, that will work with the Gotek, but most (all?) real floppy drives need 12V in as well. That may be your problem. Or may not, I'll go back to lurking!

AFAIK it was the long button brick drives which needed 12v. But all that was a bit before my time :)

I have to admit my knowledge of floppy disks is more the 5.25" variety. Maybe 3.5" ones dropped the 12V. Seems odd that Atari, who if they could cut a corner did, actually left the 12V wire in the cable if it wasn't needed!

bigbloke wrote: 20 Sep 2022 22:52 On your previous thread you mentioned only a 5V power supply to the external drive, that will work with the Gotek, but most (all?) real floppy drives need 12V in as well. That may be your problem. Or may not, I'll go back to lurking!

I've had the drive working with my greaseweazle using only a 5v power supply so I don't think that's the issue.

Thanks anyway for your suggestion.

exxos wrote: 20 Sep 2022 22:48 Have you tried only using one drive at once.IE when using the external, don't use a internal drive.

The gotek works flawlessly as the internal drive and again as the external drive. I have tried plugging the gotek into the external cable without an internal and that works.

I have tried the floppy drive on the internal without the gotek attached and it works as expected. But when I plug it into the external without the gotek it doesn't read any disks.

Regards

It just sounds like the drive id isn't being set correctly on the external drive.

exxos wrote: 20 Sep 2022 23:37 It just sounds like the drive id isn't being set correctly on the external drive.

it works as expected if the floppy drive is on the internal and the gotek on the external. just not the other way round unfortunately.

BrettRogersUK wrote: 20 Sep 2022 23:45

exxos wrote: 20 Sep 2022 23:37 It just sounds like the drive id isn't being set correctly on the external drive.

it works as expected if the floppy drive is on the internal and the gotek on the external. just not the other way round unfortunately.

But you are changing the drive ids when swapping the drives around ?