Brand new 3.5 inch floppy drive with a Disciple Interface

ZX-MAD

Hi folks, I just acquired a disciple interface and have bought some brand new "pc" floppy drives to use with/on it but cant get them to work. I found an ascii drawing on this site of the ribbon modification which i think i followed properly but wont work. If i plug it in 1 way the spectrum will say no disk in drive and the light will stay on permanently, if i plug it in the other way (upside down) the drive will try to access the disk when prompted but no light on and it just waits forever/u have to press break etc. Is this actualy possible? or am i simply getting the wiring wrong.

Also what is the difference between HD and DD floppies? I only have HD floppies, can i force it to use these? The floppies work fine in this drive when connected to my pc by the way.

ZX-MAD

MrCheese

HD = High Density - 2.0 Mb unformatted, 1.44mb formatted
DD = Double Density - 1.0Mb unformatted, 720k formatted

I *think* you can use HD discs with DD drives. IIRC there is an extra hole in the case on the discs so the drive can determine the format. You may have to cover this hole with sellotape so the drive thinks it is a DD disc.

rwap

The issue is that if you are using HD disks in a HD drive, the HD drive will detect it as a HD disk and this will not work with the Disciple (which only knows how to read/write DD disks).

You can try covering the HD detection hole in the disks, but this can cause problems especially if you later need to use a different disk drive.

You could always get some DD disks from me :-)

ZX-MAD

Thanks for the replies.
Ive tried covering the hole in the disks with the drive in my pc and this just makes the drive unable to read the disks at all??? Is that normal. I read somewhere that formatted HD disks will never be able to be read in DD mode, is this maybe why they aint working? Im not convinced its just the disks that arent simply working as the drive just spins forever when i try to access it instead of reporting no data/disk etc. I have the DS1 pad soldered when the drive is in my pc and the DS0 pad soldered when its connected to the disciple.

ZX-MAD

dekh

You'll have to reformat them with the disciple. This will put the correct cylinders/sectors and index on the disk.

ZX-MAD

Ive tried m8 it seems that i cant get the disciple to work with the drive properly. If will access the disc if i try a load command and the disk will spin forever with the light on. This is as far as i have been able to get upto yet.

dekh

How have you got the cable to the floppy?

Gods

MrCheese wrote: »

I *think* you can use HD discs with DD drives.

No. After using HD floppy on Amiga computers, HD disks don't work with DD drives.
HD floppy disk is like using CrO2 tape on "normal" tape deck, is don't work well.

ZX-MAD

dekh wrote: »

How have you got the cable to the floppy?

K heres the ribbon i made up you can see the wire connecting pin 1 and 2 :-


and heres the jumper settings/solder pads on my new drive :-

dekh

I used an HD disk with a bit of duct tape over the hole for about a month with my PlusD until I found a source of DD disks. Worked fine.

Erm, try removing the wire.


i'll try and dig out the cable twist they're linked from these forums somewhere.

ZX-MAD

I Think the links needed for the drive ready signal. But it dont seem to make any difference whicjh side i put the link or which way round i connct the ribbon. Just cant get it to work :(

dekh

Take a look at steve's links in this thread...

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/showthread.php?t=19630&highlight=plusd+cable

it shows how to rewire a standard floppy cable so that the twists do the drive select. Drive 0 goes at the very end of the cable after wires 10,11, 12 (I think) are swapped to run in the sequence ...6.7.8.9.12.11.10.13.14...

That's all that's required, I think you may be confusing the disciple by asking for Drive 0 but only have drive 1 (the second drive, attached.

Remove the jumper wire you added.

Give it a whirl.

dekh

On looking at the schematic it has it:

+D/Disciple

---

Twist 12,11,10

---

Drive 1

---

Twist 10,11,12 --- Drive 2

The first twist is unnecessary, without the first twist:

+D/Disciple

---

Drive 2

---

Twist 12,11,10 --- Drive 1

ie, flat cable to drive 2 then twist 10,11,12 to drive 1.

Don't worry if you don't have a drive 2.



Oh look Drive 1 Drive 2, Drive 0, Drive 1 just to confuse.

How about Drive A, Drive B

You know what I'm getting at right?

ZX-MAD

Oh god its starting to get beyond me now. My pc ribbon had the twist at the end already when i started but i have removed that. That guide seems to be a mod so that you can add a second drive which i dont need right now, altho it could come in very handy later on so thank you for that. Ill give this different twist a go and report back in a few.

ZX-MAD

Nope doesnt work the twist just makes the light stay on permanently and drive is completely lifeless. It the same no matter which way round the ribbon is connected.

rwap

You should not need any twists in the cable if you can solder up the DS0, DS1 pad correctly so that the drive is recognised as DS0 (in this arrangement, it would not work with the PC)!

Not easy I know, but I do have bare DD disk units too which have jumpers for selecting master / slave!

Rich

ZX-MAD

Ive sorted it with the help of rwap, just needed the proper version of the system software on tape and its working great now. I should mention that the ribbon doesnt need the pins 1 and 2 connecting as dekh pointed out and it hasnt got any twists in it at all just flat on each end, but remember i did have to take the drive apart and unsolder the ds1 pad and solder the ds0 pad.

As you can see it does work and it works a treat. Altho you must cover up the hole opposite the read/write hole on a HD floppy disk or it wont be able to use it.

Thanks for he help and advice guys this is one superb site and forum.

dekh

Yay! Nice bit of kit. sorry, missed the bit where you had desoldered the floppy!

You shuld be able to add a seond floppy straight to the cable.

DD Disks come up on ebay in big unused boxes every so often, worth getting as they should be more reliable than taped HD ones, but if you keep backups then you should be find.

There are utilities like samdisk which allow you to create disks from images and read real disks back to the PC. I'm assuming that the Disciple ahas the same format as the PlusD.

MrCheese

Gods wrote: »

No. After using HD floppy on Amiga computers, HD disks don't work with DD drives.
HD floppy disk is like using CrO2 tape on "normal" tape deck, is don't work well.

I used HD discs on an Amiga with no problems. Maybe it was because I used "disc copy" tools to copy an entire disc, rather than file based i/o on the disc? In some quarters using HD instead of DD was reccommended.

Speccyman

You must rewire your cable. Just exchange line 10 with line 12, counted from the red site. Then connect your drive. You can use HD Disks and put a tape over the HD Hole. It works very well, we copied a few hundred disks here for our +D Diskmagazine.
Nobody can tell me that I cannot use HD Disks. In fact I heard that when some producers still produced DD-Disks while everybody used more and more hard disks, they just did make the same disk but without hole... DD - Disks they could sell for higher price. However, nobody recognized because it simply works. I have Opus since more than 20 years and also a +D for some time. As I have also a MB02 using HD-Disks, I just did buy HD Disks for all systems and it still works, while many DD-disks from old time are now corrupted.

Read about our disk-magazine on www.sintech-shop.de/home/spectrum-user-club.html

Regards

Thomas

alchresearch

Yeah, I also have ignored countless warnings of "you cannot use HD floppy disks". I've still got a huge box of them formatted for the +D which still work perfectly some ten years on.

luwii

Speccyman wrote: »

You must rewire your cable. Just exchange line 10 with line 12, counted from the red site. Then connect your drive. You can use HD Disks and put a tape over the HD Hole. ...

I can confirm this works! Just revived my Disciple that has been gathering dust for more than 20 years with this.

caver99

Gods wrote: »

MrCheese wrote: »

I *think* you can use HD discs with DD drives.

No. After using HD floppy on Amiga computers, HD disks don't work with DD drives.
HD floppy disk is like using CrO2 tape on "normal" tape deck, is don't work well.

HD disks work fine in DD drives I'm using them now with my discovery on my 48k and my plus 3 drive b and have in past on my amigas without any problems just put tape over the HD hole

ZX-mad I would go with a gotek with flashfloppy far easier I do the same with the discovery and my plus 3

1024MAK

Although some HD disks work okay in some DD drives, this is not always the case. With some drives and some HD disk combinations, the data becomes unreadable within weeks :-(

As stated elsewhere and hinted at up thread, the magnetic material on HD and DD disks is different. So by using a HD disk in a DD drive (or in a HD drive operating as a DD drive) you are working outside the specification of the disk and of the drive.

Elsewhere, one factor appeared to be significant. That is HD disks that had not been previously formatted (or disks that had been erased by a bulk eraser) were found to be more reliable compared to ready formatted disks.

On the other hand, it's perfectly okay to use DD disks in a HD drive that is capable of operating in DD mode :-)

Mark

guesser

I've said many times on here before, formatting an HD disk as if it were a DD disk is fine if all you want to do is copy some files from one machine to another. I wouldn't use it for archiving backups but for a bit of sneakernet action, meh, the data will last at least that long.