Falcon Repair in the US

[Glorfindeal]

Anyone in the US able to repair a Falcon c-lab mark 1? It looks like the ide bus is non functional. When connecting a CF adapter, the card powers up but can not be accessed by a formatter ( I tried 3 different ones). If I attach a real ide drive (known to be good), the drive spins up but otherwise acts the same as the cf card.


Thanks,


Ken

[Glorfindeal]

By the way, everything else on the falcon works normally.

[Steve]

By using the term 'Formatter' makes me wonder if your drives have been partitioned. Do you realise that you cannot format an unpartitioned drive, also a formatter will only format a partition it supports. Ie; if you put an NTFS partitioned CF card into a Falcon and ask a 'formatter' to format it, it won't work.

Have you got HD Driver? If not, I think you should try repartitioning the drive in HD Driver tools first before going down the hardware repair route.

[Glorfindeal]

I think you have that backwards, you can’t partition an unformatted drive. Best Electronics did provide an already formatted and partitioned CF card with their adapter. It fails also.

Ken

[rubber_jonnie]

I think you have that backwards, you can’t partition an unformatted drive. Best Electronics did provide an already formatted and partitioned CF card with their adapter. It fails also.

Ken

I don't think that's quite right, and I agree with @Steve.

Whilst I don't have a Falcon I do have lots of TOS machines, many with hard drives (Real and SD card) and I've always had to run the partitioner first. Then once I booted my machine I was able to install the drivers (HDDRIVER in my case) from floppy and boot from the drive. I'm talking about both IDE and ASCI drives.

I appreciate the Falcon isn't an ST, but I've never formatted a drive in any as that usually means a low level format, it's always just been partitioning. You are also limited to specific partition sizes, though I can't recall the sizes for the Falcon, but they are larger than the ST/Mega/MSTE.

What drivers are you using? Have you tried running the drivers from floppy to see if you can see the drive? You may not need a repair.

[Glorfindeal]

Yes, I have. I’ve used both Peter’s and The Falcon HDX driver.

[Glorfindeal]

Also, when I tried to just partition the hard drive/CF card, both programs warned me that I needed to format first.

[rubber_jonnie]

OK, so I looked at Best and can see that you have the HDX version mentioned there.

From what I can see you shouldn't even need to be formatting it, it looks to be pre-prepared by Best and should just work with the Falcon. In any event you don't format these drives, you just partition.

Next question, is what happens when you power on, do you get any LEDs on the CF adapter? Is the power to the CF adapter good? Have you checked it? Have you tried powering the CF adapter from a bench PSU rather than the Falcon?

Are there jumpers on the CF adapter and if so, have you tried changing the position?

Have you tried a different CF card to see if you can prep the drive using HDX, which is freely available? (AHDI

It should be noted that AHDI/HDX are very old drivers so your mileage may vary depending on hardware, that's why most folks use HDDRIVER these days.

Finally, have you checked the 40 pin cable is good?

I think before you start sending out to a repair shop there are a few things left to try.

BTW it is always worthwhile posting pictures, it often makes it a ton easier for people to figure things out. The image on Best's website shows an adapter, but it's impossible to tell if power is coming from a floppy style plug, over the IDE cable or some other way. Also the adapter picture shows jumpers and LEDs, but yours may be different since Best are not know for keeping their site as up to date as it could be.

[Glorfindeal]

OK, so I looked at Best and can see that you have the HDX version mentioned there.

From what I can see you shouldn't even need to be formatting it, it looks to be pre-prepared by Best and should just work with the Falcon. In any event you don't format these drives, you just partition.

— I didn’t format it. I connected it up expecting to see at least a C: drive. When I didn’t, I contacted them and they had me do a few things. Their opinion is my ide was bad since they verified the cf adapter working before shipping.

Next question, is what happens when you power on, do you get any LEDs on the CF adapter? Is the power to the CF adapter good? Have you checked it? Have you tried powering the CF adapter from a bench PSU rather than the Falcon?

—I get the led lights on the adapter, same with the ide hard drive. It spins up when I turn on the power.

Are there jumpers on the CF adapter and if so, have you tried changing the position?

—Best said not to play with the jumpers. They are preset by them. The ide drive is configured as master (no jumpers).

Have you tried a different CF card to see if you can prep the drive using HDX, which is freely available? (AHDI

—I’ve tried 3 different cf cards and 2 different adapters. Plus a known working ide drive. Like. I said, I can not prep the cf cards or ide drive with HDX or Peter’s driver software.

It should be noted that AHDI/HDX are very old drivers so your mileage may vary depending on hardware, that's why most folks use HDDRIVER these days.

Finally, have you checked the 40 pin cable is good?

— I used the cable Best send and one I purchased from amazon, same effect.

I think before you start sending out to a repair shop there are a few things left to try.

BTW it is always worthwhile posting pictures, it often makes it a ton easier for people to figure things out. The image on Best's website shows an adapter, but it's impossible to tell if power is coming from a floppy style plug, over the IDE cable or some other way. Also the adapter picture shows jumpers and LEDs, but yours may be different since Best are not know for keeping their site as up to date as it could be.

[Glorfindeal]

Oh, right now I can’t post any pictures. I forgot to order a motherboard connector for Exxos’ PSU so I took it off the existing power supply so I can connect it to the new power supply. It should be in sometime next week. :D