i have a 5 1/4 floppy drive it works sometimes and then it wont, i can read disk no problems and then i copy a program from a working disk to a blank dskini disk on a real coco 3. it copys but i try to load it and it wont load, i did try to adjust it my self, but i cant get it adjust correctly i guess. is there a place i can send it in and have it recaliberated and clean. i tried to clean it with a disk cleaner also.
This post was submitted by dodge972.
dodge972,
To solve your problem, you need to be more precise with your descriptions. What exactly do you mean when you say a program won’t load? What error messages, if any, do you get? Is this a Disk Basic program or OS-9? If Disk Basic, is it a .BAS or .BIN program?
How are you copying a program from a working disk to a new disk? Do you have more than one drive? If not, what method are you using?
What do you see when you do a DIR on the problem disk/drive?
Is this problem constant or intermittent?
disk basic
its an io error
i will load a program from one disk list it and run it, it works perfect. then i try to save it to another disk and i get io error. i run dskini and it runs through the process and give me an ok. so i put the other disk with the .bas program back in load it and swap floppys and save it it saves then and i dir and i see the program but when i try to load it disk spins and i get an io error.
i can read most disk and save to them disk that i purchased from ebay 5 disk that is public and utilitites. but the other disk i used to be able to write and read i bought and they were atari disk but said it would work they were not notched, so i did notched them they used to work then my drive crashed i guess and i could not read any disk kekpt getting an io error so i ipened the drive and reset the the set screw so when i do a dir i get something. so now the 5 disk i bought are working no other disk are.
It sounds like your drive calibration was bad, and now that you have re-calibrated it, disks that were written to while it was bad are no longer readable. If that is the case, then having it professionally adjusted may not help with the recovery of those disks.
dodge972,
When you say, “reset the set screw” are you referring to the speed adjust control? If so, you will need to either reset it so that you can read your important disks or adjust it so the strobe wheel indicates the correct speed.
For universal best performance, the screw should be set for as close to 300RPM as you can get.
If you have made some other adjustment to the drive, you must pay a professional for re-calibration.
thanks dont know what i was doing but out of the screws and sliding the head back and forth and about 14 hours i got it to work just lost one disk(pd games disk 1 coco games)
What brand/model of drive? I used to use nearly the same method for Tandon TM-100-xA drives. I would take a disk that was written on a known good drive, remove the screws from the board of the drive that needed to be aligned, loosen the set screw (allen head) that tied the head sled to the stepper motor, power up, DIR, let it do 1 seek, then slowly move the head until it read the DIR. I’d do a few more DIR commands and adjust the head slightly to find the center of the “good” range, then tighten down the screw, and do some testing by reading random all sectors then random sectors of known good disks with DSKI$, writing some disks in the drive, then doing the read test again on known good drives. When the disks all worked fine on 2 or more drives, I’d drop power and resecure the board. never had to repeat it on the same drive unless something caused it to bang against the end stop too much (I had one time when something crashed when I was across the hall. I heard the noise, but it took probably 30 seconds to get there and stop it which was enough time for it to be knocked out of alignment).
Seems to me this worked on a few other brands with similar mechanisms, but Tandons seemed to be the most common available drive at the time (mainly pulls from original IBM PCs – TM-100-2A DSDD 40 track drives).
trs -80 color mini disk. white in color big houseing, set vertical and only has space for one drive