Subject: Re: [TI994A] Disk drive issue

From: Owen Brand <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 04 Jun 2013 23:34:32 -0600

I've had the 3.5s for a few years...  I actually did a video showing how to remove the terminator for the 5.25 in order to allow the 3.5 drives to function properly...  It's still on YouTube if I am remembering correctly.  Some title like "disk drive modification" or something of the like.

This is a totally new problem...  One that is perplexing me. :) I'll run some more tests tomorrow.  Thanks. :)

Owen Brand
Opry99er

Tursi <[email-masked]> wrote:

>My first thought here is to check drive termination - I assume the 3.5" 
>drive is a recent addition?
>
>There must be one and only one drive with termination on the floppy cable, 
>and it must be the last drive on the chain. When you have too many 
>terminators, not enough, or in the wrong place, you basically end up getting 
>random failures. (Of course, if that is so, another test might be to remove 
>the 3.5" drive and just see if the problems go away - or format the same 
>floppy again and see if the results are different - just to prove unreliable 
>behaviour.)
>
>According to the notes I took some time ago, 3.5" drives tend to handle the 
>termination, meaning you should remove it from any 5.25" drives on the same 
>cable. ( http://harmlesslion.com/text/ti_35_inch_floppy.txt )
>
>If you aren't sure about the terminator packs let me know, and I'll find 
>some photos. I've been looking at Google without much luck so far. ;)
>
>-----Original Message----- 
>From: Owen Brand
>Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2013 9:32 PM
>To: [email-masked]
>Subject: [TI994A] Disk drive issue
>
>Okay.... so my 3.5 drives are working great.  No surprise there...
>
>Here's the issue... no matter what disk I try to BACKUP using the DM2 cart, 
>it throws an error when trying to read my 5.25s.  This is strange, as I'm 
>able to catalog and list each disk just fine from the DM2 cart reading DSK1 
>(my standard full height TI-issue floppy).  I'm attempting to back up some 
>of my programs that lie in 5.25-land and it's just not working with me... 
>Is it probably that my 5.25 drive is failing me?  I do have another one in 
>the garage, but it is untested and has not been used in over 25 years... 
>I'm afraid that I may be damaging my disks and don't really want to go on 
>trying out other disks if the drive is faulty.  All I need is to lose all my 
>old game projects and unique old software packages.....
>
>Any tests I can run?  You guys have any ideas?
>
>Right now I'm trying to make a copy of MFM for a guy... I want to make a 3.5 
>backup and then write the 5.25s from that.... but for some reason, my 5.25 
>is being fickle right now...  =(
>
>
>Owen
>
>
>
> 
>

---

From: "Tursi" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 2013 22:43:41 -0700

Okay, good. Check the cables then, just to be sure. The drive heads may need 
cleaning, too. It sounds like everything /mostly/ works, so that would be my 
next thought.

Good luck!

-----Original Message----- 
From: Owen Brand
Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2013 10:34 PM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: [TI994A] Disk drive issue

I've had the 3.5s for a few years...  I actually did a video showing how to 
remove the terminator for the 5.25 in order to allow the 3.5 drives to 
function properly...  It's still on YouTube if I am remembering correctly. 
Some title like "disk drive modification" or something of the like.

This is a totally new problem...  One that is perplexing me. :) I'll run 
some more tests tomorrow.  Thanks. :)

Owen Brand
Opry99er

>is being fickle right now...  =(

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