Hi Manuel, and other interested parties:
Manuel Bilderbeek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> had this problem:
> I have a question about the Philips VY-0010 diskdrive. I recentely got one
> (for free! ;-), and when I made all the connections and switched everything
> on, the power LED went on, and after 2 seconds, it went off again...
> (...)
> programs from disk. But one strange thing is happening: when I don't put a
> disk in the drive, the drive tries reading. You can hear it spinning and you
> hear the drivehead moving. Also the BUSY LED is lit. But it won't stop! I
> should get a "Disk offline" error, shouldn't I? But the computer waits and
> waits... Only when I turn off the drive, the computer reports "Disk offline".
> When I then insert a disk, I can use it normally. But this whole thing is
> rather irritating! I now cannot boot without a disk in the drive... (unless I
> turn the drive off...)
I know of something about these antique diskdrives, that might be the
solution here:
I had one myself for a while, and it worked incredibly slow (fast
compared with tape, but really slow compared with other disk
interfaces).
When booting, it seemed to expect a disk in the drive (better to put
that disk in after power-on, instead of powering on with the disk
inside). It tried to read this disk, and if it wasn't there, made a
scratching noise (disk head movement), and again, and again,
and again, and again (didn't sound to healthy for the diskdrive
either), and only 'gave up' after a really long wait, something like
a half minute.
For starters: maybe you didn't wait long enough yet, try and see what
happens if you give the thing all the time, and I expect you will
wind up in MSX-BASIC after all, without a disk in it, if you have
enough patience.
This problem is simply the result of a very old diskROM in the
disk-interface. If you plan on going to use that drive more
regularly, than it would be a good idea to replace it with another
diskROM. You can use one from a NMS8250 or Sony 700 MSX-2, or use one
from a NMS8245, in which case you should ground pin 34 of the
floppy-connector (=disable ready-signal) to make this one work
correctly. You can skip that last part if you use that 8250/55/80 or
Sony 700 diskROM.
The interface will think it's double-sided after that, even though it
isn't, but if you ignore that it'll work at lot better that way.
Unfortunately, you can't take the interface itself as a
general-purpose disk-interface, because although it looks like a
floppy-connector on the interface part, it is not.
With this thing, part of the electronics is in the interface, a
number of signals get carried to the drive housing, where another
part of the electronics resides.
Only way to hook up other drives therefore, is to connect these
directly to the signals in this drive housing (I think it used
another type of connector as well), and I'm not sure whether it could
support DS drives either. As before, consider it antique (amazing if
it is still in original state and works 100%, it'll be something like
14-15 years old by now).
Greetings,
Alwin Henseler ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
http://huizen.dds.nl/~alwinh/msx (MSX Tech Doc page)
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