H17 Gotek and physical drive issue?

[Scott Campbell]

Hi All,

Does anybody have an H89 with a H17 controller, a Gotek (HxC) AND a physical floppy drive all working at the same time?  I would think it's theoretically possible, but I can't get it working.  Which usually means I'm doing something stupid and could use a firm talking to about it from the pros.

Here's what I'm working with and observing:

* H17 is the only controller in the system

* A Siemens FDD100-5 is attached to that, internally

* A HxC flashed Gotek (known to be working for H89) attached to the external drive port

If the physical drive is attached alone, it works fine.

If the Gotek is attached alone, it works fine.

If both are attached simultaneously (internal drive set as device 2 just to avoid any conflicts with the Gotek), the Gotek will intermittently work but the physical drive always gives errors (won't really read anything actually).

My goal is to have the Gotek and the physical drive both working (Gotek for read only of course) so I can transfer software to physical disks.

I've tried the whole thing with a Virtual Sector Generator too, but that seems to reduce the reliability of the physical drive reading so at the moment I have that out of the picture and am using known good homemade hard sector floppies to minimize variables.

I've tried another H17 card (known good as well) and that didn't change anything.

I've swapped cables, didn't change anything.

I've swapped the physical order of the Gotek and physical drive, putting them on the same cable but in different orders.  No joy.

I've tried both drives in every possible combination of device numbers.  Nada.

I've sacrificed a chicken to the gods.  Okay, I made a chicken sandwich when I was hungry.  But I offered some to the gods if they wanted it.  They didn't.  But it didn't work.

Perhaps most telling, when I was making system disks from HFE files, I had to resort to treating the system as a single drive system and hot plugging the Gotek and physical drive back and forth during format, init, sysgen and copy operations to make the disks.  THAT was a tense time in my life!  Pretty convinced I was going to fry a card, but it worked.

Something interesting though.  With the Gotek NOT connected to the chain with the physical drive, the speed test reads rock steady at 200.  With the Gotek connected to the chain, the speed test (on the physical drive as device 0) reads all over the board.  Could it be the Gotek is messing with timing on the H17 causing a physical drive to be unreadable?  If so is there a config file setting for the HxC Gotek to get it to play well with others?

What am I doing stupid, hive mind?

Thanks!

Scott

[Scott Campbell]

Also, it all works fine with two PHYSICAL drives.

[Joseph Travis]

It may be the HxC firmware is sending the sector pulses with MOTOR ON instead of DRIVE SELECT since it is messing up the H17 Rotation Speed Test.  I know the VSG won't work with a Gotek. I had that discussion with Mike Douglas (creator of the VSG) regarding this a year ago.

I recommend setting the floppy to use DS3 (Drive 0 on the H17) and DS2 (Drive 1 on the H17) for the Gotek.  The floppy should be the last drive on the ribbon cable and should have the termination resistor pack installed.

BTW - I did try this setup a year ago and gave up because too much of the software I use wants to write/save data to the drive and the Gotek won't handle it reliably.

Good luck!

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[Scott Campbell]

Thanks, Joe.  Yes, that is the drive ID configuration and termination I've been using.  No luck.

[Frank Madison]

Scott,

 

I have the very same configuration as you.  I have the Gotek working (read only).  I used a straight cable (no twist).  I placed the S1 jumper on the Gotek and left all the rest pins open.  I am using a 5V supply that is separate from the H89.  If I boot with "B", the H89 boots to the internal drive, and the Gotek is accessible with mount sy1.  If I boot with "B1", the H89 boots to the Gotek and the internal drive is accessible with mount sy2.  Along the way to finding this configuration, I found that I had a bad 34-pin cable that I had to replace.

Good luck

 

 

Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2023 at 8:09 AM
From: "Scott Campbell" <ccam...@imsa.edu>
To: "SEBHC" <se...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [sebhc] H17 Gotek and physical drive issue?

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[Scott Campbell]

Thanks, Frank.  I believe I have that same configuration.  I'll try an external power supply for the Gotek though, and another cable (though I've tried a couple already).

Do you have it physically set up as H17->GOTEK->DRIVE(Terminated), or H17->DRIVE(terminated)->GOTEK, or H17->DRIVE(unterminated)->GOTEK?

[Frank Madison]

Scott,

 

My configuration is H17->DRIVE(unterminated)->GOTEK.  The Gotek is connected at the back of the H89 case through the 34-pin connector.

 

Frank

 

 

Sent: Thursday, March 16, 2023 at 5:42 AM

From: "Scott Campbell" <ccam...@imsa.edu>
To: "SEBHC" <se...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: [sebhc] H17 Gotek and physical drive issue?

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sebhc/a73471ab-a064-4e31-bf45-c78d896e98adn%40googlegroups.com.

[Scott Campbell]

Thanks everyone.  Found it.  BOTH of the H17 controllers I was using had cracked solder joints on the ribbon cable connectors.  What are the odds?  

[rand...@hotmail.com]

Odds are high, it's the most stressed component from plugging and unplugging ;-)

Randy