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All,

My last drive has just given up on me and I don't have any more spares left. Does anybody have a working 360KB (DS\DD) 40 Track 5.25" drive they can sell me - an 80 Track would do as I'm only trying to read the Dragon disks that I have.

Regards
Simon

admin wrote:All,

My last drive has just given up on me and I don't have any more spares left. Does anybody have a working 360KB (DS\DD) 40 Track 5.25" drive they can sell me - an 80 Track would do as I'm only trying to read the Dragon disks that I have.

This may be a silly question but do you need this to be PC compatible or Dragon compatible ? I have a bunch of 5.25" drives but before testing them, I need to know what to test them with Though IIRC there are less issues with Dragons and CoCos using PC drives than say Amstrads or Spectrums as they need the 'ready' line that most PC drives don't have.

I think I cirtainly have a 360K PC drive in there.

Cheers.

Phill.

If you're trying to create images of your dragon disks on a PC a 1.2Mb disk drive will do the trick too.

I have an old pc as recover station and I can read and write dragon disks.

How difficult is it to repair Dragon disk drives?

Alastair wrote:How difficult is it to repair Dragon disk drives?

I guess that would depend on what was wrong with it

Cheers.

Phill.

Its for the Dragon, mostly SS40 disks - I have 2 x Chinon drives (1 360KB and 1 1.2M) which now both no longer work and 2 other 360KB drives that use a belt drive mech and the belts are so loose the disks won't spin !

Have just obtained 2 x TEAC 360KB drives so will test those later - but if you have any spares known to work that would be great.

admin wrote:Its for the Dragon, mostly SS40 disks - I have 2 x Chinon drives (1 360KB and 1 1.2M) which now both no longer work and 2 other 360KB drives that use a belt drive mech and the belts are so loose the disks won't spin !

What are the faults with the Chinon drives ?
You may be able to get belts for the others, I know it is possible to get belts for the Amstrad/Spectrum +3 type 3" drives.

Have just obtained 2 x TEAC 360KB drives so will test those later - but if you have any spares known to work that would be great.

Ok I'll try un-earth my box of 5.25" drives and test a few with one of my Dragons over the weekend.

Cheers.

Phill.

They keep reseting pin 34 (DSK CNG / READY) randomly which linux then reports as the disk being changed whilst I try to read it. The jumpers are all set for AT mode working (DS1, DC etc) but I think the sensor needs replacing.

These are being used on a PC to read Dragon disks -The Dragon uses XT mode (Ready on pin 34 and the PC used AT mode Disk Change on pin 34) - some drives don't have jumpers to change this - hence I have a load of drives for my Dragon which are that old they only operate in XT mode (which is what the Dragon is expecting or at least it seems that way).

The TEAC drives don't appear to have a jumper to control pin 34, so not sure yet which way they are wired...

After a bit of work, I now have 1 working 360KB drive..... and several not yet working - and one heading for the bin after it crashed its heads and scratched a nice neat circle on the disk surface.

prime wrote:

Alastair wrote:How difficult is it to repair Dragon disk drives?

I guess that would depend on what was wrong with it

Cheers.

Phill.

Cheeky!