System disk seems to work a treat. I need to do a few reads and writes but everything seems ok.
Adapting an existing floppy cable is an absolute doddle. Only problem is that the one I have aren't very long.
All you have to do is pop the clip on the last connector,
prize up the middle bit of ribbon cable - the twisted bit -
untwist it,
cut the cable separating the the 3 wires on the left of this part (closest to the red edge)
put the right hand bit back onto the connector
twist the 3 wires and put them back.
Glad you resolved the problem in the end - It must have been the version of the system disk you were using (possibly an early version?). I did not think there were any settings in the config program for the number of disk drives, but then the manual does not contain much information about the config program.
That brings me on to another issue - why will the config program not load from disk - you always seem to have to load it from cassette.
Actually there is quite a bit of mystery around the drives.
You can basically use any standard PC FDD floppy disk drive (not USB!) provided you have a PC power supply or similar. However there are two main problems:
1) a PC drive is normally configured as DS1 (slave) whereas the PlusD and Sinclair QL interfaces need a DS0 (master). Some of the older floppy disk drives have jumpers to allow you to select this, but not modern drives.
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I have a TEAC floppy-drive that was taken from an old pc. It doesn't have any jumpers for setting DS0 / DS1. But I see that some of the soldering spots on the pcb, is marked DS0 and DS1. If I closely on my floppy-drive, I see places where you can set DS0/DS1 by desoldering a resistor from the DS1 connections, and resolder it back to the DS0 solder point.
Worth a check if maybe more types of drives have this options.
Judging from what I managed on modern Samsung floppies, simply doing the cable twist is enough. Having to take such drastic action may only be necessary if you want to use a flat untwisted cable.
Comments
Adapting an existing floppy cable is an absolute doddle. Only problem is that the one I have aren't very long.
All you have to do is pop the clip on the last connector,
prize up the middle bit of ribbon cable - the twisted bit -
untwist it,
cut the cable separating the the 3 wires on the left of this part (closest to the red edge)
put the right hand bit back onto the connector
twist the 3 wires and put them back.
Worked a treat.
That brings me on to another issue - why will the config program not load from disk - you always seem to have to load it from cassette.
www.rwapsoftware.co.uk
www.sellmyretro.com
I.e. to load a new config template from disk you would have had to load a config from disk?
I dunno, the PlusD manual I have is A5 24 pages and not much info.
www.rwapsoftware.co.uk
www.sellmyretro.com
www.rwapsoftware.co.uk
www.sellmyretro.com
I have a TEAC floppy-drive that was taken from an old pc. It doesn't have any jumpers for setting DS0 / DS1. But I see that some of the soldering spots on the pcb, is marked DS0 and DS1. If I closely on my floppy-drive, I see places where you can set DS0/DS1 by desoldering a resistor from the DS1 connections, and resolder it back to the DS0 solder point.
Worth a check if maybe more types of drives have this options.