Faulty Dual Floppy Disc Drive - Repair?

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Casper
Posts: 5
Joined: Sun Aug 19, 2018 4:34 pm
Location: UK (Kent)

Faulty Dual Floppy Disc Drive - Repair?

Post by Casper »

I'm new to the forum so please bear with me.

Way back in 1983 I bough my first Dragon 32 and a year later bought the 64. Many happy hours of computing stretched out before me.

Every year I visited a Dragon Computer Fair at, I think Eastbourne on the south coast, purchasing the latest hardware and software and looking and discussing the latest developments. I bought all the Dragon User magazines and a 5.25" floppy disc drive to expand the capabilities of this wonderful machine. I then looked at getting a better and enhanced screen display and the FLEX OS was the answer. In '88 I purchased an additional drive (an Opus, I think, from S P Electronics somewhere in north Kent) and fitted it myself with a little help from S P. Great satisfaction all round. I learnt to use FLEX with all sorts of software both games and utilities that opened up with the use of a dual floppy drive. A connection with a dot matrix printer further added to its use. I even splashed out (in those days) to buy the alternative operating system OS9 but never really got the hang of it. The Dragon 64 served me well for many years. The DOS Controller went on the blink at one point and a very helpful repair man, in Hothfield just outside Ashford (Kent) put it back into working order for me.
There was a Dragon Use Group run by someone I believe was called Paul (may be wrong about the name) who lived somewhere on the south coast. He was always helpful with information and queries I had.

In all I built an extensive collection of tapes and floppy discs - all in regular use until, in 1993, I eventually fell for a Windows pc and the Dragon got packed away and forgotten. But I kept it - you never know when a Dragon revival might once again stir an interest.

Well, now it has. Brought about by packing up to move house. There it was all boxed up together with that heavy box containing the dual floppy drives as well as three large crates full of floppies and cassettes, Dragon User Magazines and all those clips and cuttings I carefully retained to help me on my way during a glorious decade of use. I loved going to the annual computer fairs.

Anyway, I digress. The unpacked Dragon 64 works fine. I even bough a monitor lead to connect to an old TV that I suspect gives a better picture than the TV lead that originally came with it. Sadly I cannot get the dual floppy drive to work. When switched on the red light at the front flickers on an off and stays off and there is no sound from the drives. Looking inside the bottom drive has a band drive that still appears to work. The top Opus drive does not appear to have a band. Inserting a floppy result in momentary activity on the head but only for a second, more just a click than anything else, so not sure if it is the power supply, the circuit board or the drives themselves.

I would love to have use of the floppy drives again as most of my old records etc are on 5.25" floppies. I know of no-one in my area that could offer a repair and hoping that someone on the forum may be able to point me in the right direction. Here's hoping.
Alastair
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Joined: Fri Jul 18, 2008 11:33 pm

Re: Faulty Dual Floppy Disc Drive - Repair?

Post by Alastair »

Hello and welcome to the forum.

Casper, I have never owned a Dragon floppy drive, let alone repaired one, so I cannot offer much assistance. However I think it unlikely that two floppy drives would fail at more or less the same time, so I suspect that the problem lies elsewhere, though whether to start with the power supply, the circuit board, or some other place I cannot say.
Casper
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Joined: Sun Aug 19, 2018 4:34 pm
Location: UK (Kent)

Re: Faulty Dual Floppy Disc Drive - Repair?

Post by Casper »

Alastair, Thank you for the welcome. I agree it is unlikely to be the drives per se. The power supply seems the most likely culprit. The interior of the unit looks very clean with no signs of corrosion or ‘powder’ , as far as I can see. I am trying to source a local repair service that can handle vintage machines. Will post if I am successful. Thanks.
Alastair
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Joined: Fri Jul 18, 2008 11:33 pm

Re: Faulty Dual Floppy Disc Drive - Repair?

Post by Alastair »

Casper, you may wish to check out the following two YouTube videos by forum member Stig (though it has been over a year since he last logged on to the forum). The videos show how he replaced the faulty power supply in his disc drive unit with a modern one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMe660KcmxU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k73D835UBmA
Casper
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Joined: Sun Aug 19, 2018 4:34 pm
Location: UK (Kent)

Re: Faulty Dual Floppy Disc Drive - Repair?

Post by Casper »

[quote="Alastair"]Casper, you may wish to check out the following two YouTube videos by forum member Stig (though it has been over a year since he last logged on to the forum). The videos show how he replaced the faulty power supply in his disc drive unit with a modern one.

Thanks for that, Alastair. Have looked at the videos that are useful, albeit a lot of soldering etc required in replacing the power supply. Instead I bought an AC to 12v 5v DC plug with molex connector and used a molex splitter to power both drives. Got the original Dragon Drive working at first and it loaded and ran FLEX OS with my old DYNACALC spreadsheet.

Alas not for long. My Opus 2nd Drive (DRIVE2) never worked - just powers on and freezes with intermittent disk activity. Will not boot any disk inserted and returns an "?NR (Not ready) ERROR. The Dragon Drive (DRIVE1) gave up the ghost as well and whatever command is entered now gives an "?RF (Record Not Found) ERROR" even when using DIR. Drive spins OK but nothing else. Tried numerous disks with FLEX OS, OS9 and DRAGONDOS Files. No go.
Jumpers on Dragon Drive are as set when working OK ie. HS + next pin (with all others free). Pin on 2nd drive (Opus) is set, as when working moons ago to DS2 only.
I'm a bit stumped as to where the fault(s) lie. Have cleaned the heads and checked all connections. DOS cartridge is returning DRAGONDOS 1.0 on power up and as both drive lights work it would appear not to be the controller cartridge at fault. Any further ideas gratefully received!!
bluearcus
Posts: 142
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Re: Faulty Dual Floppy Disc Drive - Repair?

Post by bluearcus »

Hi Casper,

There are a bunch of possible issues, from power supply, dead drive board, seized motors or other mechanics, to floppy controller calibration. Are you on the Dragon Facebook group? It's a bit more active and might help find someone local who can help...

BBC disk drives are a good source of replacement units, but there's no guarantee that it's not a controller calibration problem for which a new drive wouldn't help!

For recovering data from floppies and exporting it to modern media is tricky but there are a few options these days. There's a device called the FC5025 which allows drives to be plugged into a modern PC via USB and read.

You can use a Dragon with a disk drive and Drivewire cable to a modern PC running a Drivewire server, via some utilities written by Tormod and Pere on here... Dload and Dweebs for backing up floppies.

Zaxon has just brought out a combined floppy emulator and physical floppy interface which can make the job super easy too.

Plus there's a way with the CoCoSDC, and a multipak interface. But thats a lot of hardware...

Come over onto the Facebook group, maybe there's someone local who can help out!

Mike
Casper
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Joined: Sun Aug 19, 2018 4:34 pm
Location: UK (Kent)

Re: Faulty Dual Floppy Disc Drive - Repair?

Post by Casper »

Hi Mike,
Many thanks for your suggestions. I have managed to get my original dragondata drive working so that eliminates a faulty DDOS Controller I think.

I suspect the motor on the the Chinon Opus drive is naff, or possibly the controller board as it worked when I first unpacked it from its deep slumber of 25 yrs or so.

Not sure whether the BBC drive (or parts) could be used and work in the Dragon, especially if I would need a new motor and/or controller board.

I will look into your other suggestions regarding extracting floppy data to my pc. I am not on facebook (I have an aversion to registering for the like), but many thanks again.

Patrick
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robcfg
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Re: Faulty Dual Floppy Disc Drive - Repair?

Post by robcfg »

The DragonDOS controller has one or two variable resistors or capacitors which you may need to calibrate for it to be able to read disks properly.
bluearcus
Posts: 142
Joined: Wed Sep 07, 2016 4:45 pm

Re: Faulty Dual Floppy Disc Drive - Repair?

Post by bluearcus »

Hi Patrick,

If you are hoping to back your disks up to modern PCs and disk images which can be loaded in an emulator, or from which files can be extracted into modern PCs using other tools, then it sounds like Drivewire is probably the way to go, in terms of minimal setup.

You'll need a cable, which unless Tormod has some still available, requires a bit of building. viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4270

This thread on RetroWiki has a nice diagram: http://www.retrowiki.es/viewtopic.php?t=250

You'd then need a Drivewire server on the PC. Download here https://sourceforge.net/p/drivewireserv ... Main_Page/

On the Dragon end, you need Tormod's DLOAD/DWLOAD command to be available. This can be loaded from tape / wav file initially, and then saved to a real disk on your setup (for luxury loading, going forward)...

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4272

Once that's working, then you can look at using DWEEBS (DWLOAD Extension Binaries) to do smart stuff like copying real floppies over to images on the Drivewire server... there's a thread with DWEEBS in here including FLO2V and V2FLO which copy from physical floppy to a virtual disk image on the Drivewire server, and vice-a-versa (these are on page 5 of the thread below)...

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4968

Phew!

The super easy way is with Zaxon's DragonDrive, as no building of cables, configuring drivewire servers, loading stuff from Wav files etc is required, but until Zaxon builds a new batch or you can perhaps find someone in your area to lend you one, then Drivewire as above is certainly the easiest way!

Kind regards,

Mike
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