Having a problem with a new rev F model

[Mr.Oakley]

Hi all,

I received my new rev F floppy emulator from Lotharek the other day, great piece of kit but I'm having a few issues getting it to work.
This is what I've found so far.

Amiga 4000D Kickstart3.1 Workbench3.9
Jumper on A4000 board set to use 2 internal drives, 2nd one 880kb
adfs converted from known working ones using both 1.6 and 2.0beta software

Twisted floppy cable, drive on end of twist
Jumpers ID0A and ID1B
Drives appear normal, normal amiga drive clicking can be heard for both DF0: and DF1:
Insert a HFE disk, seems to read normally, access disk and within a few accesses a read error will appear.

Any disk I try throws a read error.

Same config
Jumpers ID3A and ID2B

Continuous drive seek sound until a disk is inserted.
Icons appear on Workbench screen as DF0:Unreadable and DF1:Unreadable

Insert a disk into df0: and both icons change to DF0:Uninitialized DF1:Uninitialized

Eject the disk, no drive clicking noise is heard.
Insert a new disk it is not auto-detected
Using the diskchange command I can get the Amiga to re-read the drive, but it still appears as Uninitialized.

I'm pretty sure its going to be something dumb that I've done, like the jumpers are wrong or something, but I've been banging my head against this for a couple of days and can't seem to get it to work reliably.

Any suggestions are most appreciated.

Cheers

Mr.O

[Jeff]

Twisted floppy cable, drive on end of twist

->So according to the user manual the right setting is : ID3A and ID2B

Do you have another floppy disk drive in the Amiga?

Have you tried another sdcard ?

Can you post a picture of your setup ? (floppy cable connection + jumper)

[Mr.Oakley]

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for the reply.

Twisted floppy cable, drive on end of twist

->So according to the user manual the right setting is : ID3A and ID2B

Yeah, if I have them like that the drive is silent. If I select a disk, the Amiga doesn't autodetect it.
If I use the diskchange command the Amiga will read the disk and I can start to access it but within a few reads it will throw a read error.
If I set the jumpers to ID0A and ID1B, the drives click like normal Amiga drives, if I select a disk the Amiga will read it but comes up as uninitialized. I even tried to format the disk but it failed at about track 11.

Do you have another floppy disk drive in the Amiga?

Not an internal, I have 2 external ones connected, I can disconnect them but I get the same results.

Have you tried another sdcard ?

Yes, I've tried a Sandisk 16GB class 4, a Verbatim 16GB class 10 and a Kingston 2GB micro SD card with an adapter.

Can you post a picture of your setup ? (floppy cable connection + jumper)

Sure, http://cakepillows.com/hxcfloppy.jpg
I'll link it as its a big picture.

Cheers

Mr.O

[Jeff]

Interesting picture.

Twisted floppy cable, drive on end of twist

->So according to the user manual the right setting is : ID3A and ID2B

Yeah, if I have them like that the drive is silent. If I select a disk, the Amiga doesn't autodetect it.

yes according to the picture the twist is unusual on this picture. it seems to invert pin 4 & 6. this shouldn't affect the HxC.
So finally the right setting is : ID0A and ID1B.

Regarding the power supply cable, are you sure that you got +5V on the yellow wire ?

Can you try to remove the ID1B jumper ?

[Mr.Oakley]

Interesting picture.
yes according to the picture the twist is unusual on this picture. it seems to invert pin 4 & 6. this shouldn't affect the HxC.
So finally the right setting is : ID0A and ID1B.

Regarding the power supply cable, are you sure that you got +5V on the yellow wire ?

Can you try to remove the ID1B jumper ?

I'd not noticed it was inverting pins 4 and 6, I'd just noticed the twist. This is the original floppy cable that I got with the A4000.
Okay, so I've set the jumpers back to ID0A and ID1B.
The power cable is the one from the original DF0: floppy drive, I just pulled the power and data cables from that and put them straight on the HxC.

I tried a splitter cable from a Molex, its actually the cable I use to power the CF card hard disk, tried booting a Workbench disk, it got part way through the boot but threw a read error.
I removed the ID1B jumper (and the jumper on the A4000 board for an 880k df1:) and tried booting the same workbench disk but got the same result, part way through booting it would throw a read error.

I did try a couple of different SD cards but got the same problems as well.

I double checked thats its got the latest firmware on there, 1.7.1.2 installed.

I'll try and get some other disk images to try and try it in another Amiga, either an A500 or an A1200.
Anything else you need me to try Jeff? Is it worth reflashing the drive?

Cheers

Mr.O

[Jeff]

Can you check the Yellow wire voltage ?

[Mr.Oakley]

Can you check the Yellow wire voltage ?

Let me sort a volt meter out and I'll get back to you

[Mr.Oakley]

Can you check the Yellow wire voltage ?

Let me sort a volt meter out and I'll get back to you

Hi Jeff,

Just measured it now, 4.94V

Cheers

Mr.O

[Jeff]

Can you check the Yellow wire voltage ?

Let me sort a volt meter out and I'll get back to you

Hi Jeff,

Just measured it now, 4.94V

Cheers

Mr.O

Can you send me the HFE image that you are using ?

Can you try the emulator with another Amiga/computer ?

[Mr.Oakley]

Hi Jeff,

Got some good news, I've found whats causing the problem.
Basically its the setpatch command on the Amiga.

I'd accidentally left an old coverdisk image mounted when I reset the amiga and to my surprise it booted successfully.
I reset the amiga and booted from the HD, tried the same disk and got read errors, rebooted with the disk still mounted and it booted successfully.
So I figured it had to be something in the Amiga's HD startup, so i commented everything out in the startup-sequence with the intention of going through each line until I found the problems, luckily it turned out to be the first line, the setpatch line.

I started going through my old workbench disks from 1.3 forwards to see if I could find which version of setpatch has the issue, turns out Workbench release 2.04 (setpatch version 37.10) and newer will cause read errors on my drive.

I guess booting games, coverdisks or anything that didn't bother with setpatch wouldn't ever show this problem up, it does leave me with a rather big issue.
Unless I leave setpatch out of the startup-sequence the drive isn't useable and leaving setpatch out of the startup isn't really a practical solution for Workbench 3.9.
I don't know if this is something that's just never come up, I didn't find many people using the floppy emulator with an Amiga 4000, or its something that's clashing between the firmware and setpatch.

Let me know what you think and if there's anything you need me to try.

Cheers

Mr.O

[Jeff]

Got some good news, I've found whats causing the problem.
Basically its the setpatch command on the Amiga.

mhhh interesting ! But what is doing setpatch to cause so much problem ?!?

[Mr.Oakley]

Got some good news, I've found whats causing the problem.
Basically its the setpatch command on the Amiga.

mhhh interesting ! But what is doing setpatch to cause so much problem ?!?

I don't know, I've been trying to search around so see what the different versions of setpatch actually patch.
Workbench 1.3.4 has a setpatch, but that works. Workbench 2.0 doesn't have one, whereas 2.04 does and that's where the problems start for me.
I've not found much information about the early versions of setpatch from Commodore, this is a breakdown of the V44.38 patch which someone had helpfully posted in a forum.

AMIGA ROM Operating System and Libraries
Copyright © 1985-2002 Amiga, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.

SetPatch (V44.38) has already been installed. Patch list:
68040 Support Code Loaded
Enabled Advanced Graphics Modes
HWG IEEE Single Precision Mul/Div/FPU Fix
ramlib signal usage
stack size check for CON:, RAW:, RAM:, PAR:, PRT:, SER:
graphics/WritePixelLine8()
graphics/WriteChunkyPixel()
Enabled data cache
ROM updates installed by SetPatch:
shell, shell 45.7 (13.01.2002)
console.device, console 44.8 (12.6.2001)
ram-handler, ram 44.23 (8.4.2001)
scsi.device, IDE_scsidisk 43.43 (16.1.2002)
FileSystem.resource, filesysres 45.10 (3.8.2001)
filesystem, fs 45.13 (3.8.2001)
bootmenu, bootmenu 44.7 (25.2.2002)
exec.library, exec 45.20 (6.1.2002)
AmigaOS ROM Update, ROMUpdate 44.57 (25.2.2002)

No details on what the actual fixes were though.

I do know, with the latest version of setpatch, if you are using a 4-way IDE adapter you have to disable the scsi.device patch in it. Just because that's how the Amiga controls its IDE port, maybe it's something a bit left field or a patch to trackdisk.device.

There was a guy that posted in this forum at the end of September about getting read and CRC errors when trying to load Workbench.
He didn't leave a lot of details but he said he flashed his device back to version 1.6 of the firmware and his issues went away. I don't have the 1.6 firmware to try that.

Cheers

Mr.O

[Mr.Oakley]

I've spent some time patching everything up with the later boing bags for Amiga OS3.9 but I still have the same issue with anything that loads setpatch.

Any chance you could send me the previous firmware to try out?

This guy in this thread seemed to indicate he had more success with it.
http://torlus.com/floppy/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=986

Cheers

Mr.O

[Jeff]

Please try this new firmware :
https://hxc2001.com/download/floppy_driv ... rmware.zip

[Mr.Oakley]

Please try this new firmware :
https://hxc2001.com/download/floppy_driv ... rmware.zip

Cheers Jeff, I'll give it a go and get back to you.