Emulating an Exatron stringy floppy with a gotek?
Emulating an Exatron stringy floppy with a gotek?
Well, this will certainly be an obscure one, but anyone working on or know if a gotek drive could replace the old exatron drive? I have an old sequential cirtcuits prophet 10 that saves patches to this drive but wondering if it’ll be possible to modernize the thing.
Re: Emulating an Exatron stringy floppy with a gotek?
I've attached a schematic I found... I wonder if this would be as easy as the quick disk emulation? I would be willing to test the hardware side of things
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- exatron.jpeg (86.63 KiB) Viewed 182661 times
Re: Emulating an Exatron stringy floppy with a gotek?
Have you a schematic with a better resolution ?
Re: Emulating an Exatron stringy floppy with a gotek?
Well, here is the source file I found, it was much larger file that I could upload here. It is a little difficult to read, but I think the pinout is the most important, correct? Also, ignore the power supply since this schematic is for a different device all together. The prophet 10 will have a 5v tap for sure to pull from somewhere.
Link:
https://c1.staticflickr.com/4/3787/3243 ... 5435_o.jpg
Link:
https://c1.staticflickr.com/4/3787/3243 ... 5435_o.jpg
Re: Emulating an Exatron stringy floppy with a gotek?
The Prophet 10 service manual is a little convoluted... the only page I could find skimming through dealing with the tape drive can be seen in the below link. It is attached to the sequencer board.
Prophet 10 Schematic Sequencer board (to tape output)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/gai0mrtd5sef8 ... e.jpg?dl=0
Prophet 10 Schematic Sequencer board (to tape output)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/gai0mrtd5sef8 ... e.jpg?dl=0
Re: Emulating an Exatron stringy floppy with a gotek?
This seems quite simple. Have you the hardware and the necessary stuff to take some signal captures ?
Re: Emulating an Exatron stringy floppy with a gotek?
Here are some pictures of the actual drive:
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- IMG_3544.jpeg (217.64 KiB) Viewed 182609 times
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- IMG_3543.jpeg (154.71 KiB) Viewed 182609 times
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- IMG_3542.jpeg (187.15 KiB) Viewed 182609 times
Re: Emulating an Exatron stringy floppy with a gotek?
more pics:
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- IMG_3547.jpeg (240.84 KiB) Viewed 182609 times
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- IMG_3546.jpeg (208 KiB) Viewed 182609 times
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- IMG_3545.jpeg (216.75 KiB) Viewed 182609 times
Re: Emulating an Exatron stringy floppy with a gotek?
last one:
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- IMG_3548.jpeg (226.77 KiB) Viewed 182609 times
Re: Emulating an Exatron stringy floppy with a gotek?
Last thing, I've found and marked all 20 pinouts from this sequencer board to the Exatron drive in red for easy reference. A new high quality file can be downloaded here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/062jg5g1o9bug ... 9.jpg?dl=0
Otherwise a low res is below:
Otherwise a low res is below:
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- prophet10diskdrive(p901 Locations).jpeg (86.56 KiB) Viewed 182607 times
Re: Emulating an Exatron stringy floppy with a gotek?
Old school PCB for sure
Can you have a look to the read data signal with an oscilloscope ?
Can you have a look to the read data signal with an oscilloscope ?
Re: Emulating an Exatron stringy floppy with a gotek?
Hi Jeff, it just occurred to me that I probably need a cassette to put in the drive to observe anything happening and I don't currently have one. I've ordered one from ebay but it won't be here until October. Also it is missing the belt but could probably just do the rubber band trick like on a QuickDisk drive. I can hear the motor spin up so that's a good sign. I also found a broken MPSU51 transistor which will need to be replaced...
i guess it'll be a few weeks until I can get back to this :/
Re: Emulating an Exatron stringy floppy with a gotek?
ok so maybe the write data line then ?
Re: Emulating an Exatron stringy floppy with a gotek?
Well.. I just fixed my prophet 10 power supply and the Exatron drive... received the new tape, went to see what was happening on the oscilloscope and then the tape got eaten. I saw what looked like square waves while it was saving, and without a tape I get some weird shape while reading. I honestly don’t know what I’m looking for, what settings on the scope I should be set to ( had it at 20mv/div and h was set to .1ms). Does this waveform look like what we should see?
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- 12C0A8EE-375B-4CA4-AA9A-F296B198CC15.jpeg (76.67 KiB) Viewed 181878 times
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- 27988618-3D7A-4856-A4D4-54F7F48F8A00.jpeg (48.79 KiB) Viewed 181878 times