Petri Pellinen wrote, on 5/Oct/10 08:52 | Oct5:
Hello everyone,
I received my shiny 23 year old Cumana disk interface for the QL
yesterday and am now trying to wire it up to a 'modern' 3.5" pc floppy
drive... So far, the results have been mediocre at best. I have
QDOS-formatted a DD floppy on the Q-emuLator but when I hook up the
drive to the Cumana interface on the QL I can't read or format the
floppy disk. The drive is obviously selected when I do a "dir flp2_"
(or "dir flp3_" depending on whether I use untwisted or twisted slot
on the cable) because the indicator light in the front panel goes on
but I get a "not found" error when doing a "dir" and "format failed"
when trying a "format".
I did a bit of research on the pinouts and it seems that the "standard
shugart" interface is anything but standard, There seem to be quite a
few variations of the signal assignments in the machines of the
eighties. One interesting article by a fellow Finn is over here:
http://www.epanorama.net/circuits/diskstepper.html
On Dilwyn's site there is a Cumana manual which does not document the
pinout on the i/f card and a "Generic disk interface manual" which
does have a pinout diagram. The interesting bit in this diagram is pin
16 which is listed as "load head" whereas on the pc floppy drives pin
16 is used for "Motor on B". Even more interestingly, the generic
pinout diagram does *not* have a "motor on" pin at all !
Does anyone know if the pinout in the generic document also applies
for the Cumana interface and whether pin 16 really is "load head" on
the QL?
If this is indeed the case and there is no separate "motor on" signal
on the QL interface then I guess I need to do a bit of wiring to
enable "motor on" when I get a "drive select" signal.
All you should use is a straight through ribbon cable - ie untwisted slot.
You then do not have to worry about connections.
You are right in assuming modern drives are seen as flp2_.
It may have a DS jumper somewhere if you want flp1_. These now are
generally solder jumpers on the pcb, but it may have external links.
Maybe the interface is simply not working or (more likely) does not like
the drive. It also is worth trying with an old drive - I bet London
Quanta have some, but maybe you are in Italy!
There are still many QL users there, and probably on this list.
Tony
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