Huge problems with REV C cased light gray on Spectrum +3

HxC Floppy Emulator on ZX Spectrum and compatible support
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schombi
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Huge problems with REV C cased light gray on Spectrum +3

Post by schombi »

Hi!

I´m really struggling with my new HxC SD card floppy emulator on my Sinclair Spectrum +3. It´s REV C cased light gray, with no labels on it, so I don´t really know which jumpers to set (all documentation is for the non-cased version only). Even worse, when switching on, I can toggle between the two HFE files, I put on, but the emulator is not recognized as a drive.

Jeff
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Re: Huge problems with REV C cased light gray on Spectrum +3

Post by Jeff »

schombi wrote:Hi!

I´m really struggling with my new HxC SD card floppy emulator on my Sinclair Spectrum +3. It´s REV C cased light gray, with no labels on it, so I don´t really know which jumpers to set (all documentation is for the non-cased version only). Even worse, when switching on, I can toggle between the two HFE files, I put on, but the emulator is not recognized as a drive.
Middle LED behaviour ?

schombi
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Re: Huge problems with REV C cased light gray on Spectrum +3

Post by schombi »

I made some progress. I wrote to Lotharek and he suggested to set the jumpers as shown on the fourth picture on http://lotharek.pl/product.php?pid=18

With this setting the HxC seems to be recognized as a drive, but still I cannot load a HFE file or even show the directory. Normally only the top, green LED is on. When I select a HFE file, the lowest, red one comes on as well. When I execute a CAT command, all three LEDs come on, it makes some sound and finally gives a "Track 0, sector 0 missing address mark" error. Now I´m totally confused.

Jeff
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Re: Huge problems with REV C cased light gray on Spectrum +3

Post by Jeff »

I have added some zx spectrum images :

can you try some of them ?
https://hxc2001.com/download/floppy_driv ... Images.zip

schombi
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Re: Huge problems with REV C cased light gray on Spectrum +3

Post by schombi »

Thanks Jeff. I downloaded the package and unzipped QuickInstall_FloppyDiskImages\SDHxCFE_ZxSpectrum.zip to a freshly formatted SD card, which then I inserted into the HxC. However, I still can cycle through the file list and select a HFE file, but CAT still gives a "missing address mark" error. I tried two different SD cards of different size. 230867351603 on Ebay is the cable I´m using and it worked well with a real external disk drive Something major is not right here... :(

Jeff
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Re: Huge problems with REV C cased light gray on Spectrum +3

Post by Jeff »

What is the jumper setting ? Can you try the ID1 position ?

schombi
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Re: Huge problems with REV C cased light gray on Spectrum +3

Post by schombi »

Currently the jumpers are set to Lotharek´s suggested positions (fourth picture on http://lotharek.pl/product.php?pid=18). According to the sixth picture on this page, this would mean ID2 and ID3. However, I also tried ID1, resp. ID0 and ID1 and none of them worked. The HxC was not accessible at all or did strange things. With Lotharek´s setting the drive is available and behaves normally, but when selecting and loading a file, I get this "missing address mark" error. I even upgraded the FW from v1.7.1.2 to v1.7.2.7, in case the FW got corrupt, but no change. I don´t really know what to do now. :(

Jeff
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Re: Huge problems with REV C cased light gray on Spectrum +3

Post by Jeff »

schombi wrote:...this would mean ID2 and ID3...
Not good : for me this should be ID1 / ID0.
Can you try to unplug the internal drive floppy cable/disk drive ?
schombi wrote:... The HxC was not accessible at all or did strange things...
Which ones ?

schombi
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Re: Huge problems with REV C cased light gray on Spectrum +3

Post by schombi »

Jeff wrote:Not good : for me this should be ID1 / ID0.
I agree. So ID0 for "A", which would be a vertical jumper in the top left hand corner and ID1 for "B", which would be another vertical jumper, one row to the right from ID0, but pins 2 and 3 on this row?
Jeff wrote:Can you try to unplug the internal drive floppy cable/disk drive ?
I´ll do that. Jumpers stay the same then I assume?
Jeff wrote:Which ones ?
Sound and LEDs sometimes went crazy

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Re: Huge problems with REV C cased light gray on Spectrum +3

Post by Jeff »

schombi wrote:
Jeff wrote:Which ones ?
Sound and LEDs sometimes went crazy
ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sincl ... Manual.pdf

According to the Zx SPectrum service manual, the floppy interface is very similar to the Amstrad CPC 6128 floppy interface.

So for sure the right setting is ID1.
By design when the internal disk drive is not selected by CPU , the external floppy disk drive is selected. That's why the "LEDs sometimes went crazy" ;). But in fact this is normal.

Don't forget this:
Internal drive = Drive "A"
External drive = Drive "B"

schombi
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Re: Huge problems with REV C cased light gray on Spectrum +3

Post by schombi »

Hi Jeff,

sorry for keeping you busy. I spent quite some time working on this problem, following your suggestions and I also started a discussion on the WoS hardware forum, see
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/s ... hp?t=41682

On my latest posting on page 2 I reported some interesting findings:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Okay guys, now it´s really getting weird. Hope it doesn´t get too complicated.

First of all, I did the measurements on the cable. Before measuring resistance, I did a wire test with the beep on my multimeter.

#7 Index 0.6 Ohms
#25 Track0 0.5 Ohms
#33 Ready 0.6 Ohms
So this looks okay to me.

I then re-formatted the SD card (Fat32), created a new CFG file and put on four freshly converted (to HFE) DSK files. The DSK files I downloaded from WoS.

I´m also in contact with Jeff from France http://torlus.com/floppy/forum/viewt...71b71d344138a9
He suggested to disconnect the flat cable from the internal floppy drive. I did it and tried the four HFE files I put on. To my amazement they showed a different behaviour:

Cat "b:" on Buggy Boy and Deflector showed a "no data" error
Cat "b:" on Rainbow Islands gave weird characters (e.g. "?"), followed by an "integer out of range" error
Cat "b:" on Castle Master showed a proper directory and I could successfully load the game!!!

As soon as I put back the internal floppy cable, the above no longer works. This was all done with the jumpers on Lotharek´s suggested positions, which are ID3 for drive A and ID2 for drive B, where in our opinion ID1 for drive B would make more sense. However, only Lotharek´s jumper configuration seems to work, but only if the internal drive is disconnected.

This leaves me with two questions:
- Why do I have to disconnect the internal drive or are the jumper settings totally wrong?
- Why does only one (converted) DSK file work? Is it just because of the copy protection?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
However, I still don´t understand what´s going on. Could you please double-check the jumper settings with Lotharek?

Thanks very much!

Jeff
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Re: Huge problems with REV C cased light gray on Spectrum +3

Post by Jeff »

Please follow my advices :

ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sincl ... Manual.pdf

According to the Zx SPectrum service manual, the floppy interface is very similar to the Amstrad CPC 6128 floppy interface.

So for sure the right setting is ID1 on the external port.
By design when the internal disk drive is not selected by CPU , the external floppy disk drive is selected. That's why the "LEDs sometimes went crazy" ;). But in fact this is normal.

Don't forget this:
Internal drive = Drive "A"
External drive = Drive "B"
- Why do I have to disconnect the internal drive or are the jumper settings totally wrong?
Because ID3 is the Motor ON signal, common to internal and external disk drive !
This one should not be used for the HxC unless there are not other drive on the bus !

Thanks

schombi
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Re: Huge problems with REV C cased light gray on Spectrum +3

Post by schombi »

Sure, but I´d still need some confirmation. Does it mean both jumpers in place? ID0 for A and ID1 for B?

Are we sure the drawing on the sixth picture on http://lotharek.pl/product.php?pid=18 is correct? I tried again, as soon as a jumper is on any (upper/lower) ID1 position, the middle LED goes red, so I suspect the drawing is not right.

Jeff
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Re: Huge problems with REV C cased light gray on Spectrum +3

Post by Jeff »

schombi wrote:Sure, but I´d still need some confirmation. Does it mean both jumpers in place? ID0 for A and ID1 for B?
No Only one jumper at ID1, row A : ID1-A.
schombi wrote: Are we sure the drawing on the sixth picture on http://lotharek.pl/product.php?pid=18 is correct? I tried again, as soon as a jumper is on any (upper/lower) ID1 position, the middle LED goes red, so I suspect the drawing is not right.
Yes please read again my previous comment :
So for sure the right setting is ID1 on the external port.
By design when the internal disk drive is not selected by CPU , the external floppy disk drive is selected. That's why the "LEDs sometimes went crazy" ;). But in fact this is normal.
This is the normal CPC / Zx Spectrum behaviour with the external disk drive...

So please put a jumper (only one !) at the ID1-A position.
Thanks.

schombi
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Re: Huge problems with REV C cased light gray on Spectrum +3

Post by schombi »

Hi Jeff,

I apologize for being unable to think clearly, but maybe it´s just something that got lost in translation from French-English/German-English.

This is how I set the jumper on the HxC
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/11/jumpersh.jpg/
, but as I mentioned before, with a jumper on that position, the middle LED goes red immediately and I still get "missing address mark" error. Did you mean the internal drive always has to be disconnected when using the HxC?

I´m still surprised allocation of the drive ID to be set by the jumpers on the my unit (ID0 to ID3) should be opposite to the one that´s mentioned in the HxC manual (ID3 to ID0).

Thanks for being patient with me.

Edit: Quick update, with a single jumper on the upper right hand corner and with the internal drive disconnected, I still cannot read all directories using "CAT", but I can load the images and some of them work. Good news, but leading to more confusion... :)

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